This week we had 2 main jobs to complete about our topic.
First we painted a scene from London during the fire.
Most of our paintings are not finished because we were being so careful with our drawings and detailed painting.
The second job was to write a diary entry as if we were the baker that started the fire in 1666.
Next week we will write another 2 diary entries to carry on the story of what happened.
Today for our best me Friday, we have been practising our painting skills using fine paintbrushes.
Whilst doing this, we have been practising many of our building learning power muscles.
These include:
Absorption
Managing distractions
Perseverance
Imagining
Interdependence
Collaboration
Imitation
These paintings are going to be used to help us learn our number sequences. We will be putting them up in the corridor so we can practise counting as we walk to and from places!
Today we are finding out whether we achieve more by working as a team.
We are repeating our challenge from yesterday, but this time in groups of 3.
Here are some pictures of teams making the tallest tower.
The following children were working so well by collaborating.... our focus for BLP this term...
Curtis, Tyler and Trey
Kimberlite, Leigh and Ellie-Mai
Harry, Jack A and Holly
Kaitlyn, Pati and Taylor
Brandon, Jaiden and Bailey.
Here are our completed towers!
The structures that stayed standing up for 1minute were made by;
Thomas, Harley and Jack F - 21cm
Brandon, Jaiden and Bailey -72cm
Leigh, Kimberlie and Ellie-Mai - 60cm
Leo, Alex and Ryan - 57cm
This means our winners today were Brandon, Jaiden and Bailey. Well done boys!
Everyone agreed that Mrs Naylor is right, we really do achieve more when we work together!
This week we are continuing our work on TEAM - together everyone achieves more!
We decided we needed to investigate whether this idea actually works.
So, Miss Rogan set the class the challenge of making the tallest tower that stands for 1 minute on it's own, using art straws!
Here are some pictures of the attempts!
These are the towers that stood on their own!
We decided to measure them using a ruler to find out which was the tallest. Here are the measurements.
Bailey 18cm
Harley 45cm
Alex 47cm
Tyler 30cm
And the winner is..... Ellie-Mai!
Her tower was 53cm tall and stood on it's own for 1 minute!
Tomorrow, we will repeat the challenge but this time we will work as a team to see if more people can make a tower that stands for 1 minute.
We will keep you posted!
In our mental maths this morning, we were set the following challenge.
Here are some examples of the children's workings out.
These are the answers we came up with!
Did we miss any combinations?
First, the Yellow group investigated the objects Miss Rogan gave them. There were wires, lightbulbs and batteries.
Miss Rogan was mean and didn't tell the children what to do with the equipment, she just put them in pairs and said "investigate".
Leo and Curtis were thrilled when their lightbulb shone!
Charlie noticed that when the lights worked, the wires made a circle.
The children were given a challenge to put an extra battery in the circuit and predict what they thought would happen. They correctly predicted that the light would shine brighter because it would get more power from the extra battery.
We also discovered that when 2 bulbs have to share 1 battery the lights shine, but are not very bright at all!
Working together as a team meant that they could make this huge circuit!
The red group were up next...
Miss Rogan set them the challenge to make the light shine - there were some very puzzled faces at first but through perseverance and teamwork, Thomas and Jaiden finally cracked it!
The children discovered that although these circuits looked the same, one of the bulbs was lit and one wasn't. The only difference they could find was that the batteries had the opposite sides facing each other on one, but not the other. We swapped them around and hey presto, the light was shining.
The topic of electricity is always enjoyed by the children!
It is a very practical, hands-on topic in which the children learn about creating circuits.
This week the children were thinking about the different types of power, for example electricity and batteries.
The children went on a science hunt around school. They had to search for electrical items and objects operated by battery.
Can you work out in which way these items are powered?
Next week the children are set the challenge of creating a circuit without any introductions by an adult!
We will keep you posted about their progress!
In term 5, we are having 2 3-week long projects, based on our topic of time travellers.
The first 3 weeks are based on The Great fire of London.
This week, the children were involved in some activities that increased their knowledge about the fire.
The first activity was a website game which introduced some of the characters that were around at the time of the fire.
It also includes challenges that have to be passed in order to move onto the next part of the story.
The link to that website is on the right hand side of our blog. Please have a play!
The second activity was to create a street scene showing the fire spreading.
The children used cereal boxes to create buildings and worked together as a team.
It's activity will carry on into next week as not all children had a chance to work on this.
The third activity was playing in our role play area.
It is set up so the children can pretend to be Samuel Pepys and write in a diary as the fire was happening.
The children are able to dress up in a costume to make themselves look like Samuel Pepys.
