Welcome back everyone. It was so lovely to see all the children again yesterday and hear all about the holidays!

We loved hearing all about the carrot challenges yesterday and today. Thank you to everyone who emailed/tweeted/sent in photos (someone even got the photos sent to them in the mail by Granny! Excellent effort! ). The children were super proud to share them!

Take a wee peek…

Today some of us harvested the carrots we planted last year! We couldn’t believe how many grew or how big they were!

They have been set a homework challenge over the holidays to create something with the carrots…we thought about soup, mince and tatties, cakes/muffins or just as sticks with a wee dip!

We would love to see what you get up to so please take photos and either send them into school with your child the first week back, email me at:

faye.henstridge@highland.gov.uk

Or tweet me:

@MrsH_DP

Enjoy!

Here is a round up of the last few weeks!

Soft start

Literacy

Last week the P1s practised all the sounds they have learned so far. This week they learned c/k and e while the P2s learned ‘ng’. They thought of lots of ‘ng’ words!

Summary of ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’

Numeracy

Lots more work on addition and subtraction these last few weeks as well as number sequences and place value.

Topic

We worked with p1 to create all the characters from ‘The Gruffalo’. It was nice to mix the children up and everyone worked really well together, choosing different materials to create their character.

Values

As you know Drakies is working on creating new values. Mr Mackenzie sent a list of values for the children to discuss. They went off into groups and discussed which values they felt were most important for Drakies. We then came back together and noted the values that were common in each group. We narrowed it down to: respect, trust, honesty, positivity, fun, teamwork, kindness and welcoming. Love those! Not sure how Mr Mackenzie will choose!

Outdoor learning

Last week Mrs Owens from nursery made a fire for us and we spent some time around the fire thinking of a risk assessment. Now that we have our rules we intend to do it more often.

This morning some of the children set up the fire themselves and we toasted some marshmallows! Yum yum! Finally we talked about being responsible and putting fires out.

The fire makers!!

We had a great session with Aigus Field Centre this morning.

We learned about hibernation. We played a game where we had to act out animals that hibernate to the other team. We learned that butterflies, frogs, bats, snakes and hedgehogs all hibernate. What fun!

Then we made hedgehog homes. We collected lots of leaves and sticks to make cosy spaces for any Drakies Hedgehogs to snuggle up in. Some groups even made little pillows and beds. Very caring.

The last activity was learning about camouflage. We looked at pictures of animals and decided where they would live based on their colour. We also had to find hidden stones…the camouflaged ones were much trickier.

What a great time was had by all!

We have been nominated for school of the year at this year’s Highland Heroes awards woohoo! Please vote for Drakies using the link below…

https://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/news/highland-heroes/

Thank you! 🤞🙌😬

We had a lovely afternoon doing the sponsored walk yesterday. And the sun shone! The children were all really enthusiastic and were great at supporting each other. Some of them were still full of energy and wanted to run some of the way! Well done everyone! Big thanks to all the parent helpers too! 🌟👏😊

It was a short but busy week last week!

The p1s went on a sound hunt and tried to find their sounds written in words around the school. The p2s were looking for capital letters and the ‘sh’ sound. They brought the IPads to take photos of their findings.

We were working on place value in numeracy. We used arrow cards to make numbers then used cubes or Numicom to represent the numbers.

After doing our role play the previous week and thinking about who can help us at school and in the playground etc we moved on to think about jobs people do that help us. We learned about what these different jobs involved and thought about the skills you might need to be able to do them.

To finish our work on ‘The Gruffalo’ we read the Scots version. We loved listening to lots of new words and had plenty of giggles.

Phonics

This week we are consolidating our 6 first sounds. Please use this week to practise the sounds at home.

We are spending a lot of time this week word building so you can use the sound cards to make words for the children to try and read. Don’t worry if they find this hard…it takes a bit of practise!

Numeracy

The children are getting on great with their number work. Some of us were counting up to 50 and beyond today. Feel free to adjust the number ranges in the homework to suit your child! 🙂

Happy homework!

Wow we are half way through the term! How did that happen?!

This week the children have been enjoying more soft start activities. It has been great watching the P1s have a go and be inspired by the p2 phonics activities. I have also enjoyed watching the children lead their learning. Some made vehicles out of construction and then wanted to investigate floating and sinking in the water tray!

The p1s learned p and n this week and enjoyed a range of activities to consolidate their learning. The p2s were focussing on sh and capital letters.

Our Julia Donaldson book for the week was ‘The Gruffalo’. We watched an animated version of the story as well as listening to the book. The story got us thinking about our feelings such as scared, worried, nervous and sad and who can help us when we feel like this. We enjoyed lots of songs about emotions and did some role play. We also made ‘worry stones’ to help us when we feel worried or scared. We decided the most important thing was to make sure we didn ‘t keep our feelings bottled up! The children have decided they would like to do an emotional check in in the mornings now so we can discuss feelings regularly! 👏

To top off an amazing week we managed to fill the recognition board. The children tried hard to work quietly while I was with a group. They were all brilliant and we enjoyed a celebratory song when the board was full! Well done everyone! 🌟

Remember Monday and Tuesday are Inservice days so see you all on Wednesday. Please note the lunch choice on Wednesday will be MONDAY! Have a wonderful long weekend.

Here are some photos from the week…

What a wonderful experience we had going to the Post Office on Thursday. The children were super excited!

When we arrived we split into groups with a letter each. The children chose to write to Julia Donaldson, The Queen, Drakies Nursery and Mr Callander.

The children asked for prices for stamps and then worked out which coins to use to purchase the stamps. They even worked out how much change they would get. I was thrilled with the numeracy skills!

Then it was time to post! Super exciting!!

As a treat for such wonderful behaviour on our trip, thinking about all the risks we discussed (the children even spotted some extra risks while we were out!), we stopped off at the park on the way home.

Thank you to our parent helpers. Very much appreciated! 🙂