We have been getting into the spirit of Halloween by doing lots of activities with pumpkins.

We made these pumpkins in art. We cut out pumpkin shapes and then sponge painted them with a mixture of red, yellow and orange paint. Then we made eyes, noses and mouths and glued them on.

They are on display in the entrance hall at school. We think they look great. Have a look if you are visiting us.

Today we did lots of maths activities to do with pumpkins. First we made some pumpkin glyphs.

This glyph shows that this superstar is 6 year old girl with fair hair, who has a sister and whose favourite subject at school is art.

Then we did some pumpkin symmetry.

Next, we looked at the giant pumpkin we have in the Halloween corner in our class. Mrs Stewart asked us to look at the pumpkin and estimate how long a piece of string we would need to go around the pumpkin. We had to come out and cut a piece of string to show our estimate. We are going to check our estimations tomorrow.

Finally, we tried to estimate the numbeer of seeds that will be in the pumpkin when we cut it open later in the week.

Here is our pumpkin maths wall almost finished…

Phew!!!

We have been learning about the importance of washing our hands, as part of our Health and Wellbeing Moshi Monsters topic.

We learned that it is important to wash our hands because germs can be transferred from one place to another unless you keep your hands clean.

We carried out an experiment in class to prove this. We put a slice of bread, straight from the packet, into a clean plastic bag. We all wiped our hands on another slice of bread, from the same packet, and also put this in a clean bag. We left the bags for a week to see what would happen. The one on the right is the one we wiped our hands on. Can you see what happened?

It went all green and mouldy. Yuck!!! We agreed that this experiment showed how may germs are on our hands. These could be transferred into our mouths, if we do not wash our hands before we eat.

We made posters to remind us of other times we should remember to wash our hands such as after touching a pet or animal, after going to the toilet, before preparing food and after sneezing or coughing.

One of the most popular items on our previous blog, and the one that the class ask to see most often, is our “Elf Yourself” videos. Here are some for Halloween …

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/bG7Olk9eTN0" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/qVgpstrD6To" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

Happy Halloween.

Well done Superstars.

We are working with a new maths program called “Go Maths.”

We are learning to count in 5’s and have been trying to do this in lots of different ways this week. We have also been trying hard to count on from 5 or 10, rather than starting from 1 all the time!

Have a look at what we have been up to.

One Superstar showed us that he could ue tally marks in groups of 5 to count up to 220!

We made ouselves into a numberline by sticking postits to our groups of 5 fingers. Then we were able to discuss how many groups of 5 are in 20, 30, 0 etc.

Working together to make cube towers, making groups of 5 where we could, and then arrange in order.

This was our first week back after the October holidays.

Here is our Star of the Week from the week before we went on holiday.

Here are this week’s stars.

Great work everyone!