Mrs Kelly – P5.17 Blog 2023/24

Mental maths fun

Collecting the resources for our outdoor activities today was great fun…and a little challenging. We had to find sticks and compare their lengths before deciding if they would be ‘branches’ or ‘twigs’, then we collected some buttercups from the buttercup kingdom, as one of the children named it to day!

We then went on to play a team game involving mental maths skills which also helped develop our understanding of exchange and place value.

We had three great bank managers for the buttercup bank, the twig bank and the branch bank. It was fabulous to hear their customer service skills develop so naturally as we played the game too!

Colour analysis and matching

Today we spent a lovely morning out in the warmth and sunshine. Well done to everyone who wore a sun hat and remembered sun cream.

We spent time studying our surroundings very carefully and were all really surprised at just how many different colours are in our environment right in front of us! We did some colour matching using some old supermarket brochures and found lots of matches!

After that we looked closely at daisies, then used a daisy to create some beautiful paintings. What a happy buzz there was this morning during our outdoor learning session. 🌼

Minibeast nature art

After being so enthusiastic last week as we found and analysed mini beasts, We decided to make some of our own this week using natural materials.

We spoke about how we must look after our environment, so we shouldn’t pick lots of anything, only what we need. We took time to check that there was plenty of whatever we picked left growing too. We also had a look at the detail in some of the plants that are growing in the school grounds. We noticed the clover has three leaves in each little section, and we thought they might be great for joining together to make a caterpillar.

Firstly we worked in pairs to collect items and make mini beasts on our display boards.

After playtime we made our very own mini beasts by gluing items onto a small piece of paper. I am sure you will agree they are marvellous and so creative!

Investigating and analysing outdoors

Today we enjoyed a marvellous outdoor session in drizzly rain, then blazing sunshine!

We began by discussing all the mini beasts we know and predicting which ones we might spot if we searched for them.

After that we worked in pairs investigating the area and searching for mini beasts before carefully collecting them in our viewing boxes. We were amazed at just how many we found. Not just under rocks, but simply crawling or jumping or squirming around on the grass.

We took some time to analyse them using the little magnifying glasses on to of the boxes. Again, there was much surprise when we saw just how quickly they moved, how they all moved and how their bodies were made up.

Here are some photos of the mini beasts we found.

Adjective adventures

We spent some time exploring adjectives outdoors to match all the nouns we could find. It was great working in pairs using our outdoor clipboards to note down all our words.

Problem solving

After a quick start getting ourselves into a rectangle…(and discovering that a square is a very special rectangle) we got straight into solving our missing numbers problems today.

We had to recreate a partially completed grid and work out the magic number that was missing from it.

Some of of us moved on to a second challenge which involved us being given a magic number to include on the grid, but we had to fit in all the missing numbers….it was a very tricky challenge, but what brilliant discussion and amazing team work we displayed.

Outdoor number investigations

Today we worked in teams and played lots of games to explore all the different ways we can add numbers together. I think our favourite strategy is using friends of ten. The discussions we had together were brilliant and we all learned to listen and give everyone a go at trying to find a solution.

We started off the session today searching for pentagons and arranging ourselves into the shape of a pentagon. Some of us were surprised to learn that a pentagon doesn’t need to have equally lengthen sides to be a pentagon, just five straight sides and five corners.

After playtime we continued our work from last week on time. We matched digital times with analogue times as you can see in the photos below.

Outdoor time

Today we re enforced our understanding of time and how to read a clock. We first made a giant clock using sticks, cones and a stone. We had turns at moving the hands round the clock to show how the minute hand goes right round the whole clock each hour while the hour hand only moves forward one number.

After that we made times on the big clock

Then made little clocks and matched digital ana analogue times.

Symmetry in nature

After a lively few ball games and running games to continue our work from last week on ‘friends of ten’,

we began looking around us for symmetry in nature and in outside constructions before working in pairs to create there wonderful symmetrical patterns using natural materials.

Friends of Ten

Despite the cold weather, we had a great time outdoors today. We searched for triangular things and organised ourselves into a triangle outside too.

Once we had played some warm up games to practise our listening and watching skills we moved on to some number bond games. We each got a calculation and we were to find a partner whose number added to our own number made ten. It was so complicated at first, but we got there in the end!

Then we went on to make some ten rockets. We all worked well in teams collecting everything we needed together and I am sure you will agree our rockets look amazing!