Blog 13th March
Well, we very much enjoyed celebrating Sports Relief today. What a lot of fun we had at our Dance-a-thon! Thank you for your support of this worthwhile cause and don’t forget to get sponsor money in to school next week.
We’ve been scientists this week as we predicted and tested to find an answer to a question. Our challenge was to answer the question ‘What is the best material to use to make a new dress for Handa?’ After discussion, we concluded that Handa needs a dress in a fabric that helps to keep her cool because she lives in a hot country. We filled beakers with hot water and wrapped them in cotton, fleece and wool. We predicted which beaker of water would cool down the most in 20 mins and we talked about how that would inform us of the best material for her dress. We took the temperature of each beaker after 20 mins and found that the one wrapped in cotton had cooled the most. We concluded that cotton was a great material for her new dress. Furthermore, we decided that wool and fleece were great for jumpers and jackets to wear on a cold day.
On Wednesday, Mrs Vicky encouraged us to be artists. We looked at the acacia tree that grows in Africa. Acacia trees are such an interesting shape and we used lines and shapes to create our own acacia trees. Maybe you could look at pictures of this tree at home over the weekend.
On Thursday, we travelled to Kampala in Uganda via Google Earth. The children were transfixed by this fabulous resource and loved seeing this vibrant and varied city on the big screen. We discovered lots of modern buildings, hospitals, schools, churches, mosques and shops. In addition there was some very smart housing alongside some very poor housing. The most surprising thing we saw was the vast quantity of outdoor swimming pools! I’m sure that the children would love showing you Kampala on Google Earth at home. In addition, why not look for your street/house. On Friday, we used what we’d seen to make our own map of Kampala.
We’ve been keeping a record of the weather forecast in Kampala over this week and comparing the temperatures with our own. It would be great if you could check the forecast over the weekend. Maybe you could find the difference between the temperature in Kampala and Alnwick.
In our number work we’ve been counting in 10s this week. The children enjoyed drinking their cups of tea as they counted these ‘ty’ numbers. We really emphasis the ‘ty’ at the end of these numbers as we count so that children don’t confuse them with the ‘teen’ numbers. Once we were familiar with the sound and look of these numbers, we began applying our skills by making sets of items in 10s and making totals with 10p coins. It would be great if you could continue counting in 10s at home.
And of course, this week we’ve been talking a lot about keeping ourselves healthy. We’ve talked about the importance of washing our hands and keeping our hands out of our mouths and noses at all times! Please can you reiterate this at home.
Have a happy and healthy weekend.