We worked hard to solve various problems during our session with ‘The Happy Puzzle Company.’  We particularly enjoyed trying to balance lots of penguins on a wobbling iceberg!

We also participated in some problem solving activities with Miss Tait and Miss Cameron.  We had to work out different ways of arranging ten spots on two different mushrooms.  We also had to try and sort various items of clothes onto a shelf based on a strict criteria.  This required a lot of very high order thinking!

Tomorrow we will be using the iPads and BeeBot robots to solve additional problems.  We will use transferable skills that we have learned with our shape, number and measurement topics.

Today the children showed a very strong interest in finding out more about food chains.  They were desperate for the game we had been playing to go onto the Blog.  You can click here to play it if you wish.  Boys and girls: remember that all food chains start with a plant or tree.

Wednesday is our busy literacy day.  Today’s activities focused on the ‘th’ sounds, the alphabet, blending letters to make words and spelling our tricky words.

We went on a 3D shape hunt outside today. We found cylinders, cones, spheres, cuboids and cubes.  We are becoming more confident at naming and recognising these shapes.  We found out that most of the playground and school area is made up of cylinders and cuboids.  We didn’t find many cones or spheres – we thought this would be because they are not good for building.

Today was the end of our measuring topic (for now).  We used all the skills that we have learned over the last few weeks to measure the real size of dinosaurs outside.  You will see these in the playground beside where we line up.  We worked in teams and marked out the length of the dinosaur we had chosen.  Then we drew a dinosaur in that space.  Some of the dinosaurs were huge.  We all confidently and correctly used the word metres when measuring and could accurately use a metre stick.

At the end the end we tried to find out how many of us could fit into the different dinosaurs.  We found out that T- Rex could fit 24 Primary ones in his tummy and still have space for more.   We thought this was amazing!

We explored the musical instruments today.  We tried playing fast or slow, loud or quiet sounds. We tried to make the instruments sound like different dinosaur stomps. We took some instruments back to the classroom to set up a musical area for us to explore during free-play.

Today we learned how to use Clicker 6. This is a typing programme on the computer.  Our targets were to change the colour and style of our writing.  We also learned how to use the Caps Lock and delete buttons.  We hope to use this new skill in our literacy activities next week.

Literacy

Please continue with handwriting  using the activities suggested last week.

Maths

We have been learning about 3D shapes.  Last week we made junk dinosaurs using 3D shapes.  This week we will be going on a hunt for different 3D shapes inside and outside.

For homework please choose one 3D shape that we have been learning about.  You could choose a cube, sphere, cuboid, cylinder or cone.  Try hunting for that one shape around your house, in your garden or when you are in the car.  Keep a total of the number you find and share it with your friends by replying to this post.  You could tell us the shape you were hunting for and how many you find.  I have replied to this post with an example.  I wonder if we will find certain shapes more than others….

You may wish to use this video as a stimulus before beginning your shape hunt.  Please click here.

Reading – we will have reading on Monday and Wednesday this week. All books will be collected on Friday before the mid-term holiday.

We worked hard in our active spelling stations again today. The elephants were focussing on spelling said, come, went, when and have.  The pandas and tigers were focussing on he, she, me, was, you and your.  You could help your child spell these words at home.  Almost all of us managed to correctly spell all of our words.