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.

We began our 3D shape maths topic today.  We found out the difference between 2D and 3D shapes and explored the cylinder, cube, cuboid, cone and sphere.  We worked in teams to use a range of different construction materials to make dinosaurs.  We love having construction focused afternoons!  We were surprised to learn that each piece of construction we used was a 3D shape.  Axel explained that some shapes will be rubbish for building because they are not flat – we are going to do an experiment to find out more about this next week.  We also plan to do a 3D shape hunt outside, make 3D shape dinosaurs out of junk, explore shapes further in our play contexts and learn to sort shapes based on different categories.

Please collect some junk for our 3D shape topic.  We particularly need cylindrical shaped junk e.g. Kitchen roll tubes, milk bottle tops etc.  No toilet roll tubes, medicine or raw meat packaging please. Thank you.

We continue to become more independent when completing our different literacy activities. Today the focus was the ‘sh’ sound, general sound revision,  reading for enjoyment and word blending.

Today we were introduced to real tools for measuring.  This built upon our work last week on using toys, dinosaurs and ribbon for measuring.  We used metres to measure lots of different items outside.  We had fun trying to find really big things to measure.  We wrote down all of our measurements with chalk.  We learned that we can use the letter m to mean metres. We all worked very hard!

Some of us gave ourselves a huge challenge by attempting to measure a tree.  We soon realised why this would be too tricky.  We estimated that the tree was 11m.

Last Wednesday we had a Scottish maths day.  We spent the entire day exploring different maths concepts with a Scottish theme.

We focussed on 2D shape initially.  We explored hexagons, pentagons, squares, circles, triangles and rectangles.  We learned that even when a square is on its side it is still a square, not a rhombus or a diamond!  Please reinforce these shapes at home regularly.

We used different shapes to try making a Scottie dog.  It was tricky to work out which shapes should go where and we needed to problem solve a lot!

We then watched a short video about the Loch Ness monster and worked with a partner to draw our own interpretations of what Nessie looks like.  We were only able to use shapes in our drawings which made it much more challenging.   We also had free-play with a range of different 2D shapes and explored how we could fit them together to make different pictures.

We  continued our measuring topic by measuring different classroom items using tartan ribbon.  We had to try and measure horizontal and vertical items.  Tomorrow we hope to go outside and measure outdoor objects.

Our favourite part of the day was measuring ourselves using our new measuring chart.  We found out who was the tallest and shortest in the classroom.  You can download the measuring chart we use here if you wish to use it at home too.