Term 1

Week beginning 24 November 2025

Dear Parents,

My apologies for not posting an update on the blog last week — it completely slipped my mind. I hope that everyone is now finding it easier to access it using the drop-down menus.

Thank you for coming along to Parents’ Night. It was wonderful to speak with you about the children and their learning. A few parent comment sheets are still to come back to school — the children really enjoy reading them!

Costumes for the Nativity should be brought in on Monday.

Our week has been filled with daily rehearsals. The children have learned their lines so well that we’ve now moved on to stage directions. Primary 1 watched our practice today and thoroughly enjoyed the performance. There is still more to do — we’re introducing props, and we hope to try on costumes next week so the children can get used to them.

Ms Traill has been off, so I have been in class for most of the week. We still managed to fit in reading, phonics, handwriting, and some maths each day. In PE, we worked on passing and defending, and in RME we learned about Daniel in the Lions’ Den from the Old Testament.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Ishbal Reid

Week beginning 10 November 2025

Hello there,

We have started our Nativity rehearsals, which will grow arms and legs as we get closer to December! The children are doing very well so far with lots of them managing their lines without scripts already. The story teller voices are coming along nicely and they are trying to use big voices that will reach to the back of the gym.

Letters with details on costumes will go out with homework next week.

In our phonics we read and wrote words with the digraph ‘ow’.

We read two books to help us understand the significance of Remembrance Day. One was the true story of Judy, a dog who was awarded a medal for bravery during WW1. The other book was a fictional story about two friends who served together during WW2. We drew beautiful poppies as part of this learning. They really are very good artists! The school took part in a minute’s silence on Tuesday 11th.

In maths, we were looking at bonds to 10 and adding and subtracting hundreds, tens and ones. We also continued our work on multiplication practicing making arrays.

We had another Kodaly session with John on Friday which was great fun

We look forward to seeing you on parents’ nights next Tuesday and Wednesday.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Reid and Ms Traill

Week beginning 3 November 2025

Hello there,

This week has flown in again; it is a busy classroom all day long.

We learned about the story of Guy Fawkes and did more descriptive writing using Bonfire Night as the context. We explored vocabulary and uplevelled sentences from ‘The bonfire was hot.’ to ‘The bonfire blazed with flames shooting into the dark night sky.’ It has been great to show the children the development of their writing since August. We read some texts about the 5th of November, and we did some detailed firework pictures.

In maths, we looked at related facts: 4+5= 9 so 40+50=90 and 400+500=900. 

After watching and discussing the format of the Bake Off last week, we recapped the Nativity story. This led to introducing the scripts for the Bethlehem Bake Off and starting to learn the songs. The clock is ticking now for our performance! Scripts will be sent home next week.

Miss Adair was in class this week and started work on the Picts by looking at timelines. In PE, they started the Virginia Reel. The children also made models of the classroom.

The hats and gloves are starting to come in to school and are already being lost - there have been tears. We are asking the children to keep all those ‘loose parts’ in their bags or shoe boxes. Please make sure that everything is labelled to increase the chances of them being returned.

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Ms Trail and Mrs Reid

Week beginning: 27 October 2025

Hello everyone,

We hope you all had a lovely holiday and have settled back into the new term. It was wonderful to hear all the children’s news, and after a lively start they are now settled back into our class routine.

This week, we recapped some of our learning on place value and basic facts. The children’s jotter work was beautiful – they’ve really nailed the layout!

We created new creatures, thinking carefully about what they might look like, how they would move and communicate, and whether they had any special powers. We explored lots of new vocabulary, drew detailed pictures, and then wrote descriptive pieces. The children put so much of last term’s learning into their writing (especially conjunctions and sentence structure) and really lifted it with fantastic vocabulary. They did a brilliant job.

We watched a little of Junior Bake Off as an introduction to our nativity. We discussed the roles of the presenters, competitors, and judges – next week we’ll move on to look at the birth of Jesus. This year’s nativity will be a blend of both.

In art, the children created some amazing pastel drawings of pumpkins, which look fantastic on our classroom wall – sorry, I forgot to take photos!

Finally, the disco seemed to be a huge hit and there were lots of great costumes today.

Please remember to return any parents’ night appointment and pantomime letters next week.  

I hope you have a good weekend,

Ms Trail and Mrs Reid

Week beginning: 6 October 2025

We have made it! The term has flown by and the children are all ready for their holidays.

The week has been busy with a bit of sorting, filing and updating our Nessie Novels – glueing has taken ages but we managed to get a few pages done this week.

In maths, we revisited counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and also ordered numbers to 100 and beyond.

We did more work on our letter formation and in phonics we looked at the ‘oa’ sound. We worked in groups to identify words to use for different parts of our describing bubble.  Being able to write a good description is necessary in many types of writing so we will be continuing with this in different contexts after the holidays.

Miss Adair was with the class for PE and music where they were doing Samba drumming and percussion. The class have also spontaneously burst into song a couple of times this week – it has been lovely. We also did some Matisse inspired collage and portraits. Despite a lot of hard work, we didn't quite them all finished so they will go up on the wall in the new term. 

We met a new pupil who will be joining us in P3/4 after the holidays when we become a class of 25.

We would appreciate it if you could take some time to make sure that all uniform items are named as we are finding a lot of unclaimed items in class and the cloakroom. With winter on its way, and the scarves and gloves coming out, we really want the children to be responsible for their own things.

We hope you all have a good holiday with plenty of sunshine,

Ms Traill and Mrs Reid

Week beginning: 29 September 2025

Hello there,

We have had a good week in class as we head towards the holidays and as always, it was a busy few days.

We were working on ‘ee’ in our phonics - reading and writing words. We have also been working on letter formation; we can already see improvements in our general presentation.

In maths, we recapped estimating numbers on a number line and then compared numbers using <, > and =. It was a little tricky to remember which way the arrows pointed for greater than and less than but we practised a lot.

We did orienteering in our PE session on Tuesday. This was fun in the sunshine as the class worked their way through different maps to find the correct numbered cones. They had to orientate their maps correctly which then led us onto a class discussion on compass directions.

In writing, they were introduced to a very big cuddly pig. They then wrote descriptions of their own favourite toys using the conjunctions we have been learning about. They wrote some fantastic pieces after working really hard on them.

Using different sketching pencils, we shaded self portraits by completing photos which had been cut in half. It was funny to mix and match those half photos.

The children are all enjoying singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – please enjoy the video.

We hope you all have a good weekend despite the weather forecast.

Ms Traill and Mrs Reid

Hello there,

We can hardly believe that there are only two weeks left until the holidays - where has the term gone?

We worked on the ‘ai’ digraph in spelling, looking at root words like ‘aim’ and then adding suffixes to make ‘aiming’ and ‘aimed’.  We revisited the letter c and how it leads into a, d, o, and g. We’re working on correct formation and consistent size, remembering that d has an ascender and g has a descender.

It was Maths Week, so we enjoyed Lego challenges, puzzles, games, and even attempted a Sumdog challenge. Logging onto the Chromebooks took longer than expected—a real test of patience but we’ll try again soon. It should get quicker! We were also positioning numbers on different number lines, making sure to check where each line began and ended.

We practised joining words while writing “About Me” pieces. Some brilliant sentences emerged, such as: “I love dogs but I don’t like cats,” and “I love going to the beach because my favourite place is Nairn Beach.”

We have started learning another classic song – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It sounds great so far and everyone is mastering that tricky word beautifully! Next week, we are going to try to learn to say it backwards.

Miss Adair was back in this week so there were lovely sounds coming from the music room on Tuesday morning. She also made clay thumb pots for Diwali with the class.

In art, we learned about the grading of pencils and what HB meant. We experimented with different types of drawing pencils to see how light or dark they were. This will set us up for sketches next week.

Thanks for your efforts with the homework; please do get in touch with any questions. There are more notes for your information ready to go out next week.

We hope you have a great weekend,

Ms Traill and Mrs Reid

Week beginning: 8 September 2025

Hello there,

The children have worked hard this week; in fact we were so busy that we didn’t take any photos – sorry!

We continued our work on place value looking at different ways to flexibly partition 2 digit numbers: 67 could be 60 and 7, 50 and 17 or 30 and 37, etc. It was a bit tricky but using concrete materials really helped.

We did handwriting and jotter layout practice – we’re trying to instil good habits from the beginning. 

Most of our Julian Opie self portraits are up on the wall looking great, but as there are a couple still to finish there is no photo yet.

In writing, we looked at what a sentence is: it has a who/what and a verb and it must makes sense. The class wrote some great sentences; we then added more detail including adjectives.  We also did started some sentence combining to tidy up sentences like: ‘My dog ran away. He is fluffy.’ We turned that into ‘My fluffy dog ran away.’

Miss Adair was back  in on Tuesday and Thursday doing PE, music and French.

Monday and Tuesday are INSET days so we hope you have a lovely long weekend and we look forward to seeing the children back on Wednesday 17th September.

Kind regards,

Ms Traill and Mrs Reid

Week beginning: 1 September 2025

Hello there,

It was lovely to meet so many people of you at the Hopes and Dreams evening this week.  We learned a lot about the children – thank you!

We have finished our class charter – please see the photo. We go through the 5 Helping Steps to support any issues but the focus is always on promoting positive behaviour; we refer back to the school values very often.

We have been writing sentences  this week  recapping the use of capital letters and full stops. We were also practising forming the letters ‘c’ and ‘a’ hoping to get everyone starting and finishing in the right place.

In maths we have continued our work on place value but we also took time to practise the layout of work in our maths jotters. Making sure we have one digit/symbol in each box sets us up nicely for formal written methods of calculations. They did a great job!

The children made table top maps and we started some simple orienteering activities in PE. P4 also had their second session with Ross County coaches.

In art, we started portraits in the style of Julian Opie. It was a tricky tracing job but again, they did a fantastic job. Hopefully, we will finish them next week.

You might have heard a little bit of Bob Marley coming home this week too - we have been busy!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

kind regards,

Mrs Reid and Ms Traill

Friday 22nd August 2025

Welcome to the Primary 3/4 Blog for 2025/26 with Mrs Reid (Mon-Wed) and Ms Traill (Thurs/Fri). We hope you have had a good summer and the first week back has been a smooth one.

It has been lovely to begin to get to know your children this week. They have been superstars adapting to new routines, to different classmates and teachers.

We will use this blog weekly to share what we have been doing in class and you are welcome to catch us at the end of the day or email if you have any thing you wish to discuss.

Our timetables are still to be finalised, but it will be useful to have a PE kit in school bags next week. Please remember to label all clothing, water bottles, lunch bags, etc so they can be returned to your child quickly and easily if misplaced..

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Mrs Reid & Ms Traill