Over the last few weeks, we have been learning about the properties of octagons, hexagons and pentagons.  In ICT, we have been learning to use different tools on the computer.  We were combining these new areas of learning in ICT.

The children set their own targets and decided that they should:

• make one or more pentagon, hexagon and octagon
• Make their shapes fancy by using different tools
• Close all their shapes properly
• Work independently (This is our new favourite word!  🙂 )

Mrs Duncan was delighted at how hard we all worked to achieve our targets.  We can now log on, load the painting software and shut down the computer with no help.  Well done everyone!

We had great fun in the snow a couple of weeks ago.  We worked in teams to create a large snow fort.  This required a lot of problem solving and collaboration.  It was wonderful to see the entire class working together to achieve their goal.

We have been very engaged with our current topic, ‘Our community.’  Part of this has involved learning about different types of homes and the type of families they might suit.  With Mrs Duncan (M,T,W) we worked in teams to correctly match different family groups to different homes.  This prompted a lot of discussion amongst our small groups.  We worked very well in our small teams.

We have been investigating the properties of hexagons, octagons and pentagons through practical activities.  We enjoyed watching funny videos about hexagons and pentagons.  You can watch them by clicking here and here.

We made our own pentagons, hexagons and octagons using a range of construction and by using straws and Plasticine.  These were quite tricky problem solving tasks and we had to persevere to get the properties of each shape right.  We also drew around 3D shapes to see which shape they made.

We particularly enjoyed tiling a variety of 2D shapes and trying to work out which ones fit together.

We have been reading Horrid Henry and have been talking about some of the features that make it a good book.  One of the key features we noticed was that the author uses a lot of alliteration.  We thought that made the story more interesting and funny.  We created our own funny alliteration names.   We are going to type these up in ICT later.

We are becoming increasingly confident at using different features of the computer and have been learning to type, log on and change the size, colour and font of our text.  We are now able to use these new skills to extend our learning in other areas.   This week we have been using the computers to type words with our new phonics sounds.

In circle time we were introduced to two new friends: Annie apple and Adam apple.  We said lots of nice friendly things to Adam. We couldn’t see what it was doing to his inside feelings but we imagined that they would be feeling good and looking healthy.  We then said lots of nasty things to Annie. Again, we couldn’t see her insides but we thought that they would be feeling sad and looking unhealthy.

Mrs Duncan then (to our horror)  chopped open Adam and Annie. We were stunned to see how our words had impacted upon their insides. Adam looked beautiful and happy. His insides looked delicious.  Annie was very different. Her insides were bruised and unhealthy. It was sad recognising how we had made her feel.  This helped us to understand how our words can affect other people’s feelings.   This is a very important message and we all clearly understood how we can build people up.  We made a big list of words that we said to Adam and we are going to display these in our classroom to remind us what we can say to make people feel good. We also went on a ‘walk’ and used these words to give kind messages to our friends.

We have been learning about lungs this week.  We found out where our lungs are and what they do.  To help us see how powerful our lungs are we made firework pictures using the strength of our breath.  We experimented with big breaths and small breaths to see how it impacted upon the paint splatter.  We all really enjoyed this very messy activity!

We had a Sooyang Do martial arts coach in gym today.  It was great!

“We did really fun martial arts moves to stop us being hurt.”  Matilda.

Here is our superstar friend of the day.  We will be posting our superstar friends every Thursday and Friday.

He was very kind to all of his friends by helping to look after our ICT log ins without being asked.  Without doing this, many of us would have not been able to log on to the computers!  Thank you superstar friend!