Mrs McDermott reports that her students are settling in beautifully . She says they are well on the way with their phonics sounds, and their lists of sight words have gone home to be part of their homework. (They also look at them in class.)
They have been learning the sounds of A, S, T, I, and M and these have been the topic for their Show and Tell sessions on Friday afternoon. The children bring in an object that starts with one of the sounds, such as turrets on a castle that one boy brought in, says Mrs McDermott.
We are counting up to 20 and beyond, recognising the numbers, and in science we have started our Living and Non-living Things unit of work.
She says the children absolutely love their hour long Visual Arts lessons with Mrs Allcorn (see our Facebook page) and Mrs McDermott adds that she has never had a class that loves colouring in as much as this one!
They also love their sports lessons with Mr Roslin and Mrs Keating and they have passed on very good reports about how well the children are participating.
In Philosophy with Mrs Donald, we have started by looking at the five school values, so far we have done Stillness, Courage and Truthfulness. They are very good at giving their observations and putting things into practice at school and at home. One Mum was telling me how her daughter showed courage… They are very good listeners and they really enjoy participating.
We ‘ve already done a lot of writing exercises. We took a caterpillar for a walk around the school and the children each did a pictorial personal recount of a caterpillar walk. So they could practise their time sequencing words and their action words and their describing words.
Mrs McDermott says they are definitely getting used to the school routine and love their lunchtimes and recess. But an absolute highlight of the week is their Friday afternoon session with their 6th class buddies.
Last week the buddies arranged everything, they set up activity stations for games and colouring and it was just fabulous. Today the buddies helped Lower First make a start on our giant class jigsaw. They absolutely adore their buddies!
Mrs Tomaz and Miss Buchanan, pictured above, assist Mrs McDermott with Lower First.
Taking a caterpillar for a walk, in preparation for a writing exercise.
