Polar Express Day

Today all of the children split into their 4 houses for a magical day on the Polar Express. It was very exciting to get to come to school in our PJs and even more exciting when we saw what had happened to our school!

There were 4 activities for the children to enjoy today. They travelled to each station on the train tracks and stamped their passports at each stop. The activities were...

Making and exploring train tickets

Making reindeer food

Making popcorn

Making a bell

This afternoon, the children used their tickets to board the Polar Express! They had to crawl through the magical tunnel and have their ticket stamped by the conductor. Of course they also got to have their very own popcorn!

Finally, we had a visit from a certain someone special to end the day! What a wonderful day for the children to remember. Merry Christmas, have a lovely break and we'll look forward to seeing you all in the new year x

                                            

Moon buggies

On Friday the children made their moon buggies. They used a saw to make the axle the correct length and a hand drill to make the wheels have a big enough hole to attach them. They added string so they could pull them across the ground. Well done Orange Class, they looked fab and just like your designs!

Missing box questions

This week we have been exploring missing box questions in our maths lessons. At the moment, we are just looking at ones involving addition and have seen how sometimes the the = sign moves in a number sentence.
(e.g 3+6=9   and 9=3+6). We thought about the = being the middle of a see-saw, and how so long as both sides have the same amount in total it will be a correct number sentence.

With this in mind, we began thinking about how to find a missing number in a question like this...

As you can see, we have been using Numicon shapes to help us with this in class.
We asked "how many more would you need on this side (4+?) to make it the same as this side (7)?"
In this case, the children could visualise that you would need another 3 with the existing 4 to make it up to 7 and could check by adding the Numicon piece they thought it was to 4 and seeing if it made the right shape.


If you wanted to try these at home, you could just as easily use cubes, dried pasta shells or anything you have in the house. For example...

(It was fun hiding the answer under the cup so the children could check!)

I would ask that if you choose do these at home you try to use objects of some kind alongside the number sentence to start with (as in the pictures) and that you show the = sign in different positions, not always 'before the answer.' Also, please keep totals within 20 for now.

If you do any at home, please do comment - or better yet, bring in a photo!

Have a lovely weekend :)

A busy week!

A very busy week for Orange Class this week. See our video from sharing assembly to get a flavour of what we've been up to. Thank you to all who came along today to assembly, the children do love to share their work with you!

Have a wonderful weekend and I do hope everyone stays well with these horrid bugs that are about!

Mysterious object...

This week, there was a mysterious object on the field! As the children arrived, something was on fire on the field and it seemed as though it had fallen from the sky as the ground was damaged. The children decided to investigate and took their clipboards outside to see what informtion they could gather about the strange object.

As well as gathering facts about what they could see, hear, smell and feel, the children also interviewed each other and their Year Two friends and recorded lots of different opinions. Some of us thought it was an alien crash landing, some of us thought it might be rubbish from the sky. A few of us thought Mr Jones (our caretaker) had pranked us in the night. Who knows?!  One thing is for sure...the children are very excited to have been reporters and will be having a go at making their very own newspapers soon. Watch this space! 

Have a wonderful weekend.