Lamlash Primary

School and Early

Years Class

Date: 1st April

UPDATE FROM MRS FOSTER Hi everyone, We have finally reached the end of term, and what a term it has been! It has been great to have the pupils back in school, and my fingers are firmly crossed that we will be back to normal after the Easter break with learning and teaching as well as health and well-being being at the heart of what we do. Our focus has been on ‘recovery’ these last few weeks, and teachers have been ensuring that each child is appropriately challenged, with revision for some of the areas that have inevitably need to be consolidated after lock down. We test every pupil on their attitudes to school and self in the High School every year; for the first time this term we ran the test in the whole of the primary. I am delighted that the results are incredibly positive. They indicate that our children have coped well during lockdown and are ready to learn. It was an egg-stordinary day yesterday (sorry!) with the whole school taking part in Easter activities which culminated in an Easter parade around the playground. I loved it, and I know the children did too. It was great to see them working together in teams and producing some beautiful crafts. I was also very impressed indeed with the quality of the entries in the egg decorating competition - I’m glad that the children were the judges and not me! This week I was interviewed for the permanent Head Teacher post for our campus; I am beyond ‘chuffed’ that I was successful! For me, it is honestly the best job in the best place that I could have hoped for and I feel very privileged indeed. I’d like to take the opportunity to thank publicly everyone who has supported me along the way; I have had a huge amount of support from staff, pupils and parents. In particular, I’d like to acknowledge the very significant contribution from Mrs Dick and Mrs Bunting – I could not ask for a better team. I’ll finish by wishing everyone a safe and happy Easter break – it is, more than ever, well deserved! Mrs Foster

UPDATE FROM MRS DICK

Dear all The highlight of this week has most definitely been watching the trim trail being built in our school grounds. Over lockdown a fantastic amount of work has gone into enhancing and improving our school grounds with more planned, however the trim trail was one thing we couldn't do ourselves on island. The trail has been designed that over the years we can add more sections to it, and the sections we have now are focussing on helping the children improve their balance and upper body strength. We hope they will all enjoy using it when we return after Easter. From our grounds into our school we have welcomed three additions to our health and wellbeing support. We now have counselling available for those aged 5+, Dr Lilias Nichols will be working with us once a fortnight to provide communication advice and support across the campus, and Shona Redmayne comes on a Tuesday to run art activities for those in P3-7 who would like more time to enjoy working on their art. This has been made possible through our locality partnership funding for the Wellbeing Centre at the school and we are delighted to be able to do this as by supporting each child's wellbeing, we put them in a better position to achieve academically. Best wishes for a happy and restful Easter, Mrs Dick

UPDATE FROM MRS BUNTING

Thanks you to all parents/carers and staff for all their hard work this term. Trying to juggle work and home schooling is exceptionally demanding on everyone concerned. I think everyone, including the pupils, deserve a well-earned break! I hope the weather is kind over the holidays, allowing people to start socialising outside. Wishing you all a healthy and safe Easter break. Mrs Bunting

TRIM TRAIL UNDER CONSTRUCTION

News from the Early Years Class

A Word from The Team

Heidi – It has been a busy term where I have seen the children enjoy using some of our newly purchased resources. Our pre-school children have enjoyed enhanced transition activities provided by Pamela Gaw. This has given the staff an opportunity to work with our younger group in smaller focus groups and on a 1-1 level. I have observed and responded to the children’s interests in sensory learning. They have experimented with different teas, herbs, flowers, to make an array of fragrances in the water tray as potions, and in playdough. The children are planning a proper tea party so they can also taste the different flavours of tea when we return after the Easter break. The children have explored texture and pattern in the art area by looking at the work of different artist and taken on these ideas to create their own pieces of work. This was continued in their outdoor learning where they looked at pattern and texture of shells in our water tray. Jacqui – My areas for this term were the home corner and small world play. We were fortunate to be gifted some beautiful hand knitted dolls clothes from a member of the community. These were most welcomed by our children who were showing an interest in caring for babies. The children showed a good knowledge and understanding of how to care for babies. The clothes have also helped the children develop their self-help skills in fastening buttons and dressing. The theme for caring continued with the children showing an awareness of how to care for our newly growing plants. This has caused much excitement as the children have watched their plants grow. Mairi – It was lovely to receive our new room dividers and archway which I have used to enhance our nurture/quiet area. The children have helped to decorate this area to create a magical gateway into this area. The magical theme continued into the construction area where I selected resources which would enhance and inspire the children to become castle builders for princes, princesses, unicorns, knights and any other character that made its appearance into the area.

We would like to wish you a Happy Easter and look forward to seeing you all back at the Early Years Class on Monday 19th April.

Special Moments Maja performing her tap dance on our stage to her friends.

Erica creating a beautiful picture using forks to create texture

The children repurposing the BIG boxes from our new resources

and turning them into something new.

DJ has shown good concentration skills whilst working on an

Easter art activity.

Children’s Voice As part of our evaluation process we asked the children what home learning activities that they had enjoyed during our last

Covid closure. Here are some of their comments:

Piper – Drawing myself and measuring me in raindrops. Isla – Making pancakes and learning letters.

Alfie – The nature treasure hunt. Noah – The stories because I could get to see Heidi, Jacqui

and Mairi. Oliver – The treasure hunt.

Maja – I liked seeing all of you reading the stories. William – when you showed me the Nursery.

P1/2 NEWS

We’ve had a busy time in Primary 1/2 since returning to school, and our friends, full time. Children have really enjoyed accessing the play based learning that we have been developing for them and their favourites at the moment very much seem to be the

deconstructed role play area (which they can make it into anything they want – a bakery, café, a house on the beach, a ship and Annie’s orphanage have been noted so far!) and the construction area. It’s wonderful seeing the children access these areas with an increasing independence, seeing them learning in new and exciting ways and, as teachers, coming up with inventive ways to challenge and progress their learning. As part of our literacy work this term children have explored the story ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers. They have been able to retell this story using a story map and actions, and also invent their own version of the story where instead of a lost penguin we had lost lions, zombies, robots, polar bears, mermaids and unicorns! All children have been working on their individual writing targets through this and we’ve seen a great improvement in children simply putting pen to paper! We’re also seeing more finger spaces, full stops, capital letter and some incredibly neat handwriting!

Maths time has been about measure with Miss Shaw and money with Mrs Marriott. Children have been really actively engaging in these topics. Capacity has been a huge hit on a Monday and Tuesday as children have enjoyed exploring how many cups fill a container, estimating and testing out their predictions. In our money work we’ve explored different coins, been ‘shopping’ in our role play area, described coins and spent lots of time talking about what they are worth. We’ve used number lines, our fingers and cubes (strategies we were introduced to before Christmas and during home

learning) to help us add prices together and some of us have even explored how to use an empty number line to help us with our addition. Each morning we’ve had a check in using our balls of emotion. These have helped us to talk about how we’re feeling and to recognise that

everyone (grown-ups too!) feel happy, excited, sad, angry, proud, calm and even worried sometimes – and that is ok! We’ve read stories exploring these emotions and discussed how talking about how we feel can really help us. We’ve also ‘visited’ Antarctica and the Sahara Desert to learn about different climates, kept a weather diary, begun to the learn weather words in French and practised ball skills and dancing! Wow! What a busy time!

P3 NEWS

Primary 3 completed another puzzle for the March into Maths numeracy event. This included finding the odd number out. They have also been busy in the playground looking at the 4 and 8 times tables along with dividing into quarters. Primary 3 have also been busy with Easter craft with chicks and the most colourful sheep being made.

P4/5 NEWS

It's been great to have all of P4/5 back together in school again. We've been trying to complete our learning outside as much as possible. This has included some of our numeracy sessions and even completing our reading outside, on a beautiful Friday afternoon. We've been lucky to have two sessions a week with Lauren (Active Schools Co-ordinator,) which give us the opportunity to try new activities and games, learn new skills and focus on teamwork.

P4/5 went on a 'drama walk' with Ms Smith and Ms McFedries. We were looking for different movements in nature. We noticed how fast or slow things moved, we talked about leaves swirling in the breeze and trickling water. We had chats about the frogspawn we saw and how it's huddled together. Next week we will use our descriptive words to create a 'moving picture' together. We had a lovely walk (the rain had a rest for us) and met some four legged friends along the way!

6/7 NEWS

Happy Easter to everyone, hope you have a lovely break. P6 and 7 have had a busy couple of weeks and are ready for lots of sleep. We have looked at fractions and tried to put them in order finding equivalent fractions. The weather has been kind to us, and we have had lots of time outside sorting out the planting area and team games. Our classroom window has the whole class flying, riding on a sea creature or similar making themselves into an animal. In Literacy we have completed a final piece of writing for our Imaginative writing section, I look forward to reading them over the holidays. Stay safe and I will see you all in 2 weeks' time.

EASTER EGG-STRAVAGANZA!

On Wednesday 31st March we had our egg-cellent Easter activity day. We had Easter egg hunts,

Easter egg competitions, an Easter bonnet team challenge and parade.

Children were invited to bring in a decorated egg from home to enter into our egg competition.

The entries were fantastic, with bunnies, superheroes, food and many other inventive and

interesting ideas being entered.

Egg competition winners were:

P1/2 Lucas Miller - Sonic the hedgehog

P3 Tommy Dutton – with loads of different eggs including

a sheep, a panda and an alien.

P4/5 Jack Hird – Minecraft

P6/7 Callum Glister – who shared with us a painted egg and

a fantastic, mouth-watering hamburger egg!

All classes took part in an Easter egg hunt, with Primary 1/2 taking part with the morning EYC

session and P6/7 joining in with the afternoon EYC session. We had great fun running around (and

hopping around) the playground hunting for coloured eggs.

During the day the whole school and EYC also took part in Easter crafts and our thanks go to the

Parent Council for providing us with the money to buy these craft activities. We’ve had ceramic

sheep, bunny baskets and egg cups to name a few.

There was a House Competition to create an Easter bonnet. The children were split into teams and

they had to decide on a theme, a model and create their bonnet all in a very short space of time!

Winners were a brilliant Easter themed bonnet from Mac’s group, with ‘Eggs, Eggs, Eggs’ from

Gabri’s group and Warran’s Mario hat coming in as runners up.

The climax of the day was an Easter egg for every member of our

school, for pupils and staff, as a thank you, a well done, ‘a we’re so

happy to have you back’ and a very big Happy Easter!

And on that note we at Lamlash Primary and Early Years Class wish you

all a very Happy Easter!