I hope you are all well and have been enjoying hearing stories and new learning from your Primary 1 child(ren)! We have had a fantastic start to the term and the weeks are flying in.
Literacy
As I am sure you have heard from your children, we have started learning our sounds. We have been enjoying learning the actions to the jolly phonics songs and we hope you can enjoy singing them at home too. We are currently learning 4 new sounds each week – focusing on forming the letters correctly, hearing the sounds in words and beginning to blend our sounds together to read words.
It makes a huge difference if you can spend a little time each day practising recognising each letter sound, writing the letters and sounding out letters – this can be a little tricky and your child may benefit from hearing you sound out the letters p-e-n, you can then ask them to tell you the word you have sounded out. As their confidence grows over the next few weeks, they should begin doing this independently.
Numeracy
In numeracy we have been practising number formation of numbers 0-10. We are working on counting carefully and accurately, and in a variety of formats – such as counting fingers, tally marks, dots, Numicon, cubes, shells etc. We have started to explore the concept of more and less and ordering numbers correctly.
Practising this at home daily is also much appreciated, this can be done through daily routines – setting the table, helping with household chores etc. Please feel free to use the back of your child’s phonics jotter to practise number formation (those 2’s and 5’s can be particularly tricky!).
Health & wellbeing
We have spent lots of time becoming familiar with school routines, getting to know the school environment and familiar faces of staff who work in the school.
We have spent lots of time discussing our emotions, what emotions can look like (facial expressions, body language) and how to deal with big emotions.
We have also been discussing how to keep ourselves and each other safe in school and in the community. We have chatted about the strangers, and how to recognise safer strangers who may be able to help us (teachers, police etc).
General
It has been fantastic to see each child’s enthusiasm for learning, and already they are beginning to use their learning in their play. Play will remain an important part of our school day, enabling to develop essential skills and use and share knew knowledge with each other.
I have been busy taking photos of all of your children exploring and learning in their classroom over the past 5 weeks, and look forward to sharing these with you once we have finalised all photo permissions😊
A massive thank you for all your support so far. If you have any worries please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Miss Sweeney
