Latest News from P1 Red
Hello everyone.
The girls and boys in primary 1 red have been really busy this term. We have been working very hard and would like to share what we have been learning with you.
We really enjoyed our Scotland topic. We learned about the Scots language, Scottish history, Scottish culture and some of the many different places in this beautiful country. We also found out about tartan and even designed our own ‘clan’s’ tartan and made our own kilts. We used lots of new and exciting describing words in our writing about ‘Nessie’ and ‘Hamish McHaggis’.
The children learned the Scottish rhyme ‘3 craws (crows) sat upon a wall’ and we got to perform our rhyme and actions at out special school assembly held in honour of Robert Burns.
Thank you to Mrs Armstrong for all the hard work she put into organizing our ceilidh. We all enjoyed trying out some new and old traditional ceilidh dances. The primary 1 boys and girls were lucky to have some excellent P4/5, P6 and P7 role models to help us during ceilidh practice and the ceilidh.
We celebrated Chinese New Year as a whole school, with a very exciting visit from a Chinese Lion doing a dance for the whole school. We also welcomed Anqi Tong from the Confucius Institute to teach us all about the Year of the Monkey.
As we are now in the period of Lent, the children have written Lenten promises and every day we are trying hard to make good choices in order to live more like Jesus. We will continue to listen to Bible stories and reflect on them. We were visited by Bishop Hugh to help us celebrate the Scottish Catholic Education Week and we got to take part in our first school Mass. It was a lovely ceremony and many thanks to all those who attended.
We are collecting money in school for the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF). Every single penny that we raise for this WEE BOX appeal will be doubled by the UK government. With us all working together to raise as much money as we can, we will help families to work their way out of poverty, overcome drought and hunger and have an education. The children can bring in any few pennies you can spare to help with the ‘WEE BOX’ appeal.
ST PATRICK’S DAY
For St Patrick’s Day on March 17th the children can wear something green if they donate 50p to our SCIAF fundraising efforts. I hope to organise some more fun St Patrick’s day themed activities and I will make sure to let you know well in advance of the day.
Language:
Thank you for your continued support with reading. The children are making fantastic progress. Please continue to practise reading aloud at home as often as possible. It really makes a huge difference.
We are going to begin learning the sounds that contain 2 letters but make one sound (diagraphs). We will be learning;
‘sh’ as in sheep, shape, ship
‘th’ as in thin, that, moth
‘ch’ as in chop, chicken, chip
‘ng’ as in long, king, song
‘wh’ as in what, when , whip
We will also be making sure to look over all the sounds and tricky words we have learned already in order to consolidate our learning.
We will be working on building, reading and writing short CVC/ CVCC words from the sounds we know and we will use our magnetic boards and Education City activities to help us with our word building. We are continuing to learn to:
Say the word. Make and break the word into the different letter sounds. Blend the sounds back together. Read the word. Write the word.
CVC = consonant -vowel- consonant like c-a-t
CVCC = consonant – vowel- consonant- consonant like l-o-t-s
Maths:
We have just started our maths topic on money. We have worked on recognising the different coins. We will use our knowledge of addition and subtraction to work out payments and change up to 20p. As we become more familiar with the coins in class, we will work towards adding amounts together using 10ps, 5ps, 2ps and 1ps.
We will be learning to count in 2s and 10s and will be working on learning about doubles to 10.
Topic
Our new topic is “Shops and shopping”. We have been discussing and writing about our own favourite shops and the times we have been shopping. Throughout this topic we will be looking at the different types of shops and at differences between shops now and in the past. We will be designing our own shops, making our house corner into a class shop, writing shopping lists, thinking of ‘silly foods for our ‘silly’ supermarket and learning songs, rhymes and games about shops and shopping.
Science
The children will continue to enjoy Science lessons with Mrs Jadid every Tuesday. They have been learning about the planets and now they are learning about the earth.
Co-operative learning:
We have been having great fun working co-operatively during our Art lessons. We have created cities, monsters and flowerbeds working together with our ‘face’ and ‘shoulder’ partners. Ask the children about these different types of partners. We have also been experimenting with different ways of mark making, using paint, pastels, pens and pencils.
Teddy Bear Hospital:
On Wednesday March 9th we are going to welcome two medical students from Aberdeen University to our class. They will be running a Teddy Bear Hospital so please bring your teddy in by Tuesday 8th March at the latest. They will using our teddy bears to help us learn about our bodies and the importance of keeping healthy. Hopefully they will help our class ‘monster’ get over his terrible cold.
Thank you again for your continued support. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any assistance with any aspect of what I have written.
Mr O’Neill