04 | June | 2024 | Cart Mill Family Centre

Some of our children have been asking to explore ‘big big numbers’ so today we introduced them to the story of How Many Jelly Beans?

We began the story of Emma and Aiden who are discussing how many jelly beans they can eat. Starting with ten jelly beans, the number of jelly beans gets higher and higher as they try to outdo each other with larger and larger amounts. Each quantity is represented in the same amount of jellybeans which prompted lots of discussion from the children as the numbers increased more and more.
“Look at all these jelly beans!”

”1000 has three zeros.”

“There are too many to count!”

You might be sick if you ate all of them!”

The children got more and more excited as the numbers got higher and higher and soon the whole page was full of jelly beans as we got to ONE MILLION JELLY BEANS!

When we finished the story Helen invited us to carry out our very own Jelly Bean Challenge. We had a large jar of jelly beans and our challenge was to guess how many were inside. We all took a turn of holding the jar to help us estimate how many. We learned that estimating means having a look and guessing how many by what we could see.

We estimated….

”I think there is one million and forty four”

“I think there is a trillion!”

We decided that we wanted to count our jelly beans to see how many we had. We had lots of discussion about how we could count them and we finally decided that we would first sort them into colours and then count them.

It took a long time to count them as we had so many but we worked together as a team and found that we had 136 jelly beans altogether!

We had a great morning of counting and estimating and perhaps even more surprisingly, no jelly beans were sneakily eaten!

Article 28 You have the right to education

Today the children decided it was time to release our butterflies. The species we have are called Painted Ladies. We made sure the weather conditions were suitable for example the temperature was above 12 degrees and it wasn’t to windy. The children measured out a nectar solution of one teaspoon sugar to 100mls of water cut up some tangerines and mashed a small slice of banana to put outside in case the butterflies needed energy to look for flowers. I explained that the butterflies mouth functions like a straw to sip up the nutritious liquids and that they should live two to five weeks. Then the children unzipped the habitat and patiently waited for the butterflies to fly away.

The children were delighted to see the butterflies so close up. “ It’s got a very furry body” “It’s tickling my nose” “I think butterflies have a nice pattern on them, I like the colours on them”

In the garden today we also did a little weeding and planted some herbs to make our mud kitchen concoctions a bit more interesting. The children planted parsley coriander and basil they thought the basil had the nicest scent.

The children were very gentle while planting their herbs and knew that they would need sunshine and water to grow. It has been such a busy day, planting and releasing our butterflies. Maybe you could have a look and see what other species of butterflies you have in your garden or in the local community when you are out and about. We would love to see any pictures!