Journey Sticks

In class this week we have been learning about the Aboriginal people of Australia.  We have been learning about the Dreamtime, when they believe the world was created and Walkabout when a boy proves he is ready to become a man.  

We went on our own journeys around our school grounds and collected things from the ground, trees, plants and bushes.  

We used different coloured wool to tie them to a large stick.  The wool was used to represent different things on our journeys. 

After we had made our sticks we shared with the group what they mean to us.

Listen to some of our descriptions.

What would your journey stick look like and what would it mean to you? 

Little Visitors in the Robins Class

On Friday morning we had the pleasure of meeting four little friends. 

They won't be little for long as they are Giant African Land Snails.  They started out about the size of your fingernail and lived in a jam jar for a little while.  Once they had grown a bit bigger they were transferred into a brand new tank.  They love to eat lettuce and cucumber.

We asked if we could hold the snails.  They felt slimy and stuck to our hands. We made sure we washed our hands afterwards.    

Mrs K was really brave and held one and the snail came out of it's shell and opened its little mouth parts like it was yawning.

The snails loved our class so much that they stayed for the day.  At home time Mrs K thought that they had escaped because they were nowhere to be seen.  But luckily we were reassured that they like to tunnel under the soil in their tank.

We were surprised how easy they are to look after and they make great little pets!  We look forward to seeing them when they are fully grow.   

What is Australia like?

We have had a busy week learning about Australia and Australian animals.

We have been looking at physical maps of Australia to see what the land looks like. We discovered that the land is quite varied and has deserts, rainforests, mountains and you can even ski in the south during the winter months!  

Some of the children showed an interest in finding out more about the Great Barrier Reef.  Did you know it is visible from space?  

We created own own physical maps showing the naturally occurring features of Australia.  The children chose different objects to represent the physical features and then made a key.    

Next we will be finding out about famous Australian landmarks. 

Place Value on the Playground

The good weather this week led us outside on to the playground to complete our work on comparing and ordering numbers.

 We used large sticks as empty number lines and had to imagine that one end was 0 and the other was 10. Where would 7 be?  Some of the children thought it would be a good idea to find the half way point, which was 5, and this would help us to work out where 7 would be.  

 We had a few goes at finding numbers to 10 and then changed our number lines so that 0 was on one end and 100 was on the other. What would the half way number be now? 

 We practised finding 2 digit numbers on the empty number lines.

 Some children decided to mark out every multiple of 10 to help them find other numbers on the number line.

 The children decided to use another stick to point to the place where they thought the 2 digit numbers would be.  Others used their fingers to count out spaces between the tens numbers.

Good work Robins, you thought carefully about where the numbers would be on the empty number lines.