Problem solving!

This week we received two very large scrolls of paper…after carefully unravelling them we discovered that the giant from our class story needed our help! He had heard how good we were at solving problems from the Fairy Godmother and The Big Bad Wolf.

The first scroll we received said something very odd. The giant thought that his arm span was the same length as his height! We didn’t believe him. After discussing what the giant meant by arm span we were quite convinced that he must have got his facts wrong. There was no way his arm span could measure as long as the enormous giant’s height…surely?

After contemplating an expedition up to the top of the beanstalk ourselves we determined that we didn’t actually have the giant’s address and didn’t want to knock on the door of the wrong castle by mistake. And as Xander pointed out we certainly didn’t have a long enough tape to measure him!

Zoe had a brilliant idea, she suggested that we measured ourselves to see if our arm spans were they same as our height!

We realised that it would be incredibly hard to measure ourselves so Ethan suggested that we ‘’work in teams’’. At first we all wanted a turn to be measured but quickly understood that it had to be the same person who was being measured otherwise our results wouldn’t work out.

We practised by measuring Thomas (who lay very still J), we discovered that to measure our arm span our arms had to be very straight and that is was much easier if everyone in the team had a separate job. One person held the paper still, one cut and the others made sure the paper was straight.

We were very careful measurers and were able to see if our arm spans were the same as our heights by placing our two strips of paper very carefully next to each other.

It turns out that all of our heights are slightly longer than our arm spans. So the giant was nearly right.

Ethan had another brilliant idea …’’but we are just children, we should measure you Miss Sullivan, you are nearly giant sized!!.’’

‘’Or Mr Chapman’’ said Erin!

Perhaps we will ask him next week J

Is it a hamster?

When Archie came back from his adventure to Australia over half term he was very excited to teach us about native Australian animals. He brought in two cuddly toys. We knew that one of them was a koala but the other animal had us all scratching our heads!

Archie wouldn’t tell us what it was called…we had to ask him questions. We had all sorts of suggestions as to what it could be. Katie thought that it was a hamster, Annabel said that it was too big to be a hamster ‘’but good idea Katie.’’ She thought that it must be a baby bear instead.

William. A said that is might eat seeds and nuts. This made Freddie think of squirrels and we soon started to discuss how Archie’s mystery animal did not have a big bushy tail.

Wyatt suggested that we look in a non fiction book, we had a look in our book box but we didn’t have a book about native Australian animals so couldn’t do that. ‘’Look on the computer’’ said Malindi. Before we could even start the computer up somebody said ‘’why don’t we just ask Archie he has the answer in his head’’.

All of this time Archie had been keeping the identity of this mystery animal a very guarded secret.

Ethan suddenly shouted out…’’I know it! It’s a bat! I have seen one on the t.v.’’

(He was so close!)

Can your children remember what this mystery animal is called?

Archie did eventually tell us J

Sportacus

 

As you know, your children have been attending ‘Sportacus Training Camp’ every Thursday afternoon during their PD lessons. Mr Chapman has been recruited by Sportacus to teach our children to eat well, sleep well and keep exercising. Every week they are put through their paces by Mr Chapman who sets up obstacle courses and circuits.

Last week Foxes class had a big shock! While they were waiting for Mr Chapman they spotted a secret message taped to their whiteboard….

Robbie Rotten had kidnapped Mr Chapman and would only let him free if the children worked hard at the training camp.

The Foxes think that Robbie Rotten must have secret cameras in the gym so worked extra hard with Mrs Moran in order to free Mr Chapman.

All of their exercising and stretching must’ve worked because at the end of the day a very bedraggled Mr Chapman appeared back at the Foxes door. Robbie Rotten had let him go. Phew!

On Friday we all got a BIG shock! As we were lining up to go to lunch we saw a blue and white blur whizz past our FS2 gate. Could it have been Sportacus?

Yes!

Sportacus visited us during our special Sport Relief lunchtime to tell us how hard we were working and remind us to eat healthily and sleep well. He played some physical games with us in the playground and even jumped over a buggy!!! (The boys were in awe of this skill and talked about it all afternoon.)

What a shame that Mr Chapman wasn’t there to see him!

Our year at a glance

Have you seen the display board outside Otter class? Next time you are at school take the time to look up and read all about our learning throughout the year. It is like a giant scrapbook where we document snippets of our learning from the month. The children really enjoy seeing it change and often suggest what they think should be added.  It can be seen from the talk sofa and is often the source of much reminiscing while sitting comfily amongst the cushions! Funny stories are remembered and laughed about all over again.

I wonder what the next few months will bring. Pop in to see it grow.

Welcome to our 'Sand Kitchen'

Over the past few weeks you may have noticed a slow transformation of out outdoor learning environment. We have been working hard to develop our very own ‘sand (at the moment) kitchen’ alongside your children. We thought hard as to what skills we were hoping the children would practice whilst playing here and carefully selected equipment that would foster these skills and provide some challenge!

So far this week we have observed children, pouring, splashing, mixing, combining, brewing, sieving, counting, measuring, filtering, ladling, sprinkling, sweeping and mashing…with plenty of laughing, role playing and negotiating. ‘’No, I do not like your sand pie! Please take it back to the kitchen it needs less salt.’’

Children have been using their imaginations to feed their play. They had to improvise as more children entered ‘their’ kitchen to join in with their dialogue and ‘taste’ their curious concoctions.

Adding water to the sand made for interesting discussions about change and texture. Sweeping wet sand is certainly more of an upper body work out for the children than dry. Cleaning wet sand out of utensils and pans requires a little bit more creative thinking. Just tipping doesn’t work! New skills such as scraping and rinsing were observed today.