A Dinosaur Came to Visit

Once we had the footprints in our classroom we had a new clue as to what had left the egg in our classroom. It generated many conversations and there was all of a sudden a lot of talk about dinosaurs.

We decided to set up the camera overnight and see if there were any visitors to our classroom. You will not believe what we saw!

There was a dinosaur in our classroom! He walked all over the table and did a BIG roar before he left again. It made us believe we had been right when we said there was a dinosaur in the egg. Some children quickly got to work and started making a trap to try and capture the dinosaur. They thought about a fake egg to trick the dinosaur into coming and having a look, a rope to trip him up and some water to pour on his head once he was trapped. There was lots of cooperative thinking to solve their problem.

Then Miss Deakin came back from setting up the Outdoor Are and told us she’d seen another footprint. We went to have a look. It was so much bigger than the ones in the classroom. We measured to see how long it was.

Everyone was amazed to see how much bigger than our feet the dinosaur footprint was. We decided to measure it in some different ways.

We then used this information to measure some smaller footprints of our own and smaller measuring units. We worked with a partner to choose a unit to measure with and then measure the footprint. We made sure we followed the same rules.

And then…..

We did a wonderful job making our dinosaur a shoe. Can you imagine how big the show shop would need to be if this is just one shoe?!?

Our parents and carers made some comments in our Floor Book. We love knowing what the children are talking about at home and which learning they are sharing.

What have we been learning? 

• to measure in different ways using a variety of different non-standard objects, such as cubes, bottle tops, whiteboard pens. 
• to meet challenges and solve problems, such as how do we make a shoe for the dinosaur and how do we capture a dinosaur.

How can you continue the learning at home? 

• Collect some objects at home, such as pennies, bottle tops, forks and so long as they are all the same size use them to measure some bigger objects in your house, like the table. 
• Use footsteps to measure some of your garden. How long is the path? How wide is your doorway? 
• allow your child to help you solve simple problems in the home, such as we have 5 people in our house and they want 2 biscuits each? How many do we need altogether? 

Our Awards This Week- Summer 2 Week 4

Our Writer of the Week surprised everyone this week with his writing. He not only wrote one sentence but he wrote a whole book! He decided he wanted to make a book and about one of his favourite things- CARS! There were pages about petrol cars, diesel cars and even electric cars. He did a great job of sounding out to spell his words and use the phoneme strip to find the letters he didn’t know. Well done!

Our Mathematician of the Week always does everything with a smile on her face. She did a wonderful job this week helping everyone solve problems with numbers. She worked hard to workout which numbers added together made ten.

This Week’s Awards- Summer 2 Week 1

Our Writer of the Week this week has made so much progress. His Nursery teachers would be so impressed at how good his writing has become. He is now writing a full sentence on his own using the resources around him independently. What a fabulous job he has done- he’s definitely ready for Year One!

Our Mathematician of the Week has been working particular hard to record her ideas. She was able to sort the buttons into different colours and find a way to record it on paper. She wrote all the colours and how many of each she had. After she’d done this she was able to work out which one she had most of. Great job! Yet another example of how Onyx class are getting ready for Year One! 🙂

This Week’s Awards- Summer 1 Week 4

What a fabulous job from our Mathematician this week. He amazed Miss Parker with his super maths skills which came from a self initiated problem he set himself. He was trying to make sure he had 8 of each of the colours. In talking about how many he had how many more he had when he found more and how many more he needed he showed he had really mastered the calculation skills needed to solve the problem. (He was handed the certificate by his friend who was in the role of teacher at this time.)

The Writer of the Week is another child who is now able to show us that everything we have learnt about writing all year is really starting to click and she is able is write her own sentences. Its been so amazing to see her confidence grow and grow.

A Dinosaur in the Classroom!

We had a special visitor last week….. at first we only saw footprints and we didn’t know what had been in our classroom. Some of the children had an idea and started to investigate further. They found a dinosaur in a classroom and started to make links between the two.

It was a few days until we saw anything else but a few days later we noticed more footprint and the giant egg had hatched! This time there were two sets of footprints. Again we had a to get busy thinking what they could possibly be. There were dinosaurs in our giant egg which confirmed what we thought about it being a dinosaur.

We looked in books to see if we could find out more.

Some of us were a bit sceptical and thought there couldn’t have possibly been a real dinosaur in our classroom. Miss Parker set up a special camera in the classroom over night and the dinosaur came back!!! We got to see it on the iPad.

The dinosaur also left us a note and a present which was very exciting.

We decided that we wanted to paint our dinosaur but that gave us a problem.  Lots of people couldn’t remember how to make the right colour green that we needed to paint the dinosaur. We decided that we needed to refresh our knowledge of colour mixing before painting our dinosaur.

It was so exciting to have a real life dinosaur in our classroom and we hope he comes back again soon!

This Week’s Awards- Spring 2 Week 4

It has been another great week in Onyx class this week. Our Mathematician of the week did some great work in his focus group activity with Miss Morris. She was really impressed with his calculation skills and the way he was able to solve the problems she set. The children had to try and find a collection of animals with a given number of legs. Can you see which numbers he was trying to make?

It was too difficult to choose a Writer of the week this week. Everyone did such a fabulous job writing their Mother’s Day cards. We’ve not given them to our mums and carers yet but we will tomorrow and we think they’re going to be really impressed with how good we’ve got at writing! We think you’ll agree- have a look below…

Mince Pie Maths

We’ve had an elf visiting us during the month of December. He’s come to visit from the North Pole to help Santa out before Christmas. We’ve been busy showing him what superstars we are in Onyx Class.

On Friday, Mr Elf brought us a special treat. He must have heard us talking about mince pies earlier in the week after we saw a picture of some. We knew that they were a special Christmas food but not many of us had tried them. We predicted what they would taste like. Jayden said he thought they’d taste like chocolate, Mateo said they would taste like sugar because looking at the picture on the box he could see sugar on the plate and Adam predicted they’d have raisins because the picture had raisins.

There was a problem though…

We saw there were 6 mince pies in one box. Mateo worked out that meant there would be 12 in two boxes. We opened the second box and checked to find out he was right. That left us with 12 mince pies and 28 children! What were we going to do? Someone had the idea of cutting them in two but when we counted them in twos (with Miss Parker’s help) we released that was still only 24 and not enough pieces. We decided to share each mince pie into three! With some help, we counted the mince pie pieces in three and found out that we’d have enough with some spares left over.

Everyone got some mince pie to try. We were really pleased that everyone tried the mince pie even though some of us weren’t too sure what it would be like. Some of us really liked it and some of us really didn’t! Jayden found out it didn’t taste like chocolate at all and Mateo and Adam found out they were in part right. Can you remember what your piece tasted like? Parents/ Carers- you can look in our Floor Book to see what else we had to say about them.

Gracie-Mai did an amazing job of being our photographer and took lots of photos on the iPad while we tried them.

While we were trying our mince pies Mrs Hoyland came to say hello. We decided to see if she liked mince pies as well. Some children took her a piece to find out then took a picture to show us her answer. Do you think she liked it?

We’re really glad Mr Elf brought us some mince pies. I wonder if they’ll be any more surprises next week before he heads back to the North Pole to get ready for the big day!

What have we been learning? 

• to share objects so it is fair. 
• that sometimes you get some objects left over. 
• to count objects. 
• to count in two and threes with support. 
• to try new foods that we might not be sure about. 
• to predict what something might taste like from looking at it. 

How can you continue the learning at home? 

• count out other objects during meal times, e.g. How many chicken nuggets do you have?
• share out objects at home to make it fair, e.g. Does everyone have a sweet? If there are 6 sweets and 3 people, how many do you get each? 
• try new foods. If you try and special Christmas foods let us know on a Wow moment.

How Many Legs?

We have been busy doing lots of Maths in school and because we love stories so much our teachers have been looking at the best stories so we can do Maths and stories together. We’ve also been learning about the different animals we’ve currently got in our classroom (tadpoles and caterpillars) so it fitted in perfectly when we found this story….

 

We loved reading the story and starting to work out how many legs the animals had on their own and together. We started to draw them and write the numbers so we could remember.

We talked about how to record the calculation when we added more than one animal together. We also talked about how you can correct your recording if you get it wrong first time.

 

Then we looked at checking our calculations by jumping on a number line.

Some of us practised counting how many legs were on the animals when they were stood by themselves. We had to find the number and write it in our books. Miss Parker gave us some extra challenges as well, such as, what is one more?

Some of us added two of the animals together and had to record the calculation to show how many legs altogether. This was a bit trickier but we could count the legs together and as one group.

Some of us were given a problem to solve such as can you find me a total of 6 legs? Or can you find me a total of 10 legs.  We had to count the legs until we found two animals which had that total of legs. After that we had to record it in our books as a calculation. We had to find all the ways to find a given number of legs, such as how many ways can you make 8 legs? 

Some of us were given a harder problem and had to find a way of making the total with 3 animals.

Miss Parker then left the animals out in the classroom for us to use if we wanted too.

What have we been learning?

• to count how many legs on each animal. 
• to count groups of objects altogether.
• to solve problems using objects to help us. 
• to record calculations using + and =. 
• to look for the maths in a story. 

 

How how can you continue the learning at home? 

• Look for any Maths in stories you read together. There are lots of examples, e.g. The Very Hungry Caterpillar- number of objects, one more fruit, patterns looking at the symmetrical butterfly. 
• Count two groups of objects together, such as, how many strawberries have I got? How many have you got? How many have we got altogether? 
• Solve different Maths problems together at home, such as I’ve got 2 plates out for dinner, how many more do I need for everyone to have one?

 

Making Love Monster Happy

When it was Valentine’s Day we read some stories about the Love Monster. The children loved the story and it led to some amazing child- initiated learning as the children decided to try and cheer him up. Miss Deighton collected all the pictures we took and the things we said to make a whole class Learning Story. You can read it below…..

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Everyone was happy and the Love Monster seemed to be cheered up to 🙂

You can also see our Learning Story and pictures displayed in our new Library. FS1 Diamond class (Nursery) helped us by making some Love Monsters.

What have we been learning? 

• To be kind friends. 
• To organise and hold a party for the Love Monster. 
• To follow a recipe ourselves and bake cakes. 
• To solve problems such as ‘Are there enough buns for everyone?‘

How can you continue the learning at home? 

• Make cakes and buns together following recipes. 
• Think how to be a kind friend for other people you know out of school. Could you draw them a picture or write them a letter? 
• Allow your child to help you solve problems at home such as ‘Are there enough plates for everyone?’ at dinnertime.