The start of Spring Term

First of all, can I say a huge thank you and well done to the children who brought in some awesome home learning! We loved sharing it in class and the children were so excited to find so many house points on their home learning this week. It really was wonderful hearing the children being so enthusiastic about their learning.

Our topic is now 'down on the farm' and as part of this, we have been looking at the story 'Farmer Duck' (which has a fab animated version on YouTube by the way!). We used Farmer Duck to help us learn all about time this week, as the children timed each other completing farm-related activities. They then compared times and talked about which activities took longer and also decided who in their group did the tasks in a slower or quicker time.

Here we are doing some of the activities...

Sweeping

Harvesting crops with a 'beak'

Collecting 'milk'

Putting animals in their pens

Building a barn

Tractor trail 

We have also started learning some hockey this half term, which we are all very excited about! We have learned how to hold the stick -  "it's a bit weird bending like this!" - and have learned how to dribble. We also learned how to pass and the basics of tackling without fouling. This week, we enjoyed putting our new skills into practice and had some mini games in our house teams. Well done Archie C for scoring for Diamond House! We definitely have some cracking players who are already thinking about where to be on the pitch for their friends to pass to. Here we are learning the basics...

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 :)