Dear P1 parents and carers,
It’s been an exciting fortnight back in school, with children especially excited about Halloween this week.
We are very pleased with the progress our Primary 1 children have made in settling in to Primary 1 thus far. This week we have introduced the first sounds ‘a’ and ‘t’ and the children have been very keen to learn these. They have shown some excitement over their first homework too! During our maths time, we have built on to our play-based approach to include short whole class input as well as activity rotations across the week, similar to our ‘Funky Fingers’ approach, but maths-based.
On the whole children have made very good progress with packing and unpacking their own bags and being independent with their packed lunches and water bottles. For those children who still find carrying all of their various bits a challenge, it would be good to practise this at home.
PE kit
For most children, dressing and undressing themselves remains a challenge, particularly when changing for PE. You can imagine keeping twenty plus sets of clothes separate and folded on tables is a logistical challenge, when children are not yet developmentally ready for this process. It would be very helpful if this could be practised at home, as it takes time and a patient adult to help children learn how to manipulate buttons, turn clothing outside in, tie shoelaces, etc. We appreciate your help in encouraging your little one’s independence as you can imagine assisting more than 20 young children to dress themselves at once can be a challenge!
Having trialled changing for PE over the past fortnight, we recognise that the majority of our Primary ones are not ready for this challenge, and so it would not be sensible to persevere with this at the moment. Therefore, we have decided to postpone changing for PE until the Spring. P1 PE will be spread across the week, 20-30 minutes per day, which gives us the opportunity to maximise the days we have good weather.
With this in mind, please do not send PE kit in for the time being, as the children will wear their school uniform for PE. If girls are choosing to wear dresses, please send a pair of leggings to be worn under their dresses at PE time. Please do send a pair of trainers in your child’s bag each day, so that they can be worn for PE. We will return to changing for PE again in the Spring.
The Secret Garden
As the weather is now colder and wetter, from next week could you please provide Wellies, a warm, waterproof coat, hat and gloves to keep your little one warm during our visits to the Secret Garden on Wednesdays for P1/2 and on Thursdays for P1R? If you don’t have these things to hand, please speak to me, as we may be able to help.
As always feel free to phone the school to speak to me with any questions or concerns or catch me at afternoon collection time.
Kind regards,
The P1 Team