Sunday, November 4, 2012

Measuring the BFG

We love all of Roald Dahl's books and have read many of them throughout this year.  Our latest one is the BFG and the students in 1/2T have been engrossed in Roald Dahl's wonderful prose - especially his descriptions of what giants eat!  As part of our study of measurement and using centimetres and metres to measure length and height, we decided to see how tall the BFG is.  In the story he is described as being 24 feet tall, so we went outside and measured 24 feet.  We then worked out that this is about 7.5 metres tall.  After this we went back into the class and estimated the height of our own BFG and Sophie.  Here are our results.

By the way, our BFG was actually 2 metres and 10 centimetres tall and Sophie was 27 centimetres tall.  Congratulations Thomas for correctly estimating Sophie's height!

Fraction Action!

In Maths this week we have been learning about fractions and have been exploring the concept of fractions being a part of a whole.  Don't just think pizzas and cakes!  Think "groups of" too!  We've done lots of hands on activities about fractions, like these "Fraction cakes".  The children really enjoyed working out how many quarters and eighths it took to cover their cake and then working out what fraction of their cake had particular coloured icing. Here's some of our work.

Millie's scrumptious looking fraction cake

Happy Birthday fraction cake by Sashka

Inside Charlotte's cake

We also made "Fraction cupcakes".  In this activity, the students put sprinkles on their cupcakes and worked out what fraction of their sprinkles were particular colours.

Past, Present, Future

Our focus for English this week has been past, present and future tense verbs and sentences.  We did activities sorting words and sentences according to their tense and read books focusing on the verbs in the text.  One of our favourite books was "To root, to toot. to parachute" by Brian P Cleary and the children had a great time illustrating verbs from the text and writing the past, present and future tense of their word.

Things to do at home

Keep preparing for your show and tell dates - we've had some great presentations and I can't wait to see more.

Read, read, read!!!!!

Next week we will be looking at addition and subtraction in Maths.  Here are some links to websites that have some worksheets that provide great practise in these concepts.
Addition and subtraction problems
Worksheet works

and here are some online games you can try    
Bugabaloo
Penguin party
Alien munchtime
Number pyramid


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