Learning about Ghana

This afternoon Mrs Comer came into our classroom with a special visitor. It was her friend Sam, who has come all the way from Ghana where he runs a school. Mrs Comer has been to visit his school, and today Sam came to visit our school.

We looked at the globe and found Ghana - it's in Africa.

We looked at some information on the National Geographic Kids website (http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/) about Ghana and found out that in Ghana they grow cocoa beans - these are used for making chocolate! We also found out about a kind of monkey that lives in Ghana called the Roloway monkey.

Then we watched a video of some children in Ghana doing different things like dancing, playing drums, going to school and washing clothes. We talked about some differences between Ghana and England.

"They speak a different language." - Fallon

"They had more children in their class." - Lucy

"Monkeys live there." - Harrison

"I like the dancing." - Harry

Moving to music - The Planets

This morning we listened to the pieces of music called The Planets by Holst. We talked about whether the music was fast or slow, loud or quiet, as well as how it made us feel and what we could imagine happening while it played.

We moved around the room to the music, trying to match our movements with the speed of the music. Some of us were very expressive as we used our arms and heads as well as our bodies.

Dexter liked moving around as if he were a dinosaur - when we listened to Mercury, the Winged Messenger, he said, "I'm a pterodactyl in the time of the dinosaurs, they're the ones that can fly," when we listened to Mars, the Bringer of War, he said "it's like a dinosaur being mean," and when we listened to Uranus, the Magician, he said "it's like a knight trying to catch a T Rex." Great interpretation of the music Dexter!

We enjoyed listening to the different pieces of music - Venus, the Bringer of Peace was a nice calm piece, while Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, was much more lively and happy!

Our planet - Earth!

This week we are learning all about the planets. This morning we sang a song which teaches us the order of the planets - some of us already knew the names of some of the planets.

This afternoon we were learning all about the planet we live on - Earth. We looked at some photos of Earth from space and talked about what it looked like. We said "it's a sphere" (Harry), "it's green" (Tommy) and "it's blue" (Brianna). We decided that the blue is the water - the seas and oceans - and the green is the land. We could also see some white, which we decided was clouds.

We used the iPads and explored our planet using Google Earth. We zoomed in on different countries and spotted rivers, lakes, forests, buildings and fields. We also looked at our school!

We also used chalks to make a picture of the Earth from space - we used blue, green and white and blended it with our fingers.

We talked about what we can do to look after our planet. We agreed that we shouldn't drop rubbish (litter), we shouldn't cut down trees and we should look after the plants and the animals.

Sorting shapes

Today we have been sorting shapes.

Some of us learnt how to sort shapes using a Venn diagram. One circle was for red shapes and the other was for 3D shapes. Where the two shapes overlap we put shapes that are red and 3D. Shapes that aren't red or 3D went outside the circles. Not only did we do really well at putting the shapes in the right place, we were able to explain our learning to Mrs Waites and tell her why the shapes went where they did.

The sun and the stars!

This week we are learning all about the sun and stars. We have been busy working together to make a collage of the sun, we're learning a song all about the sun and we have answered some of our questions about the sun!

Do you know how far away the sun is?
The answer is... 93 million miles!

We also learnt about why the sun is important. The sun gives us light and heat. If the sun wasn't there, what would it be like to live on Earth? Finlay said "cold" and Emily said "dark" - do you think they're right?

We have also been learning about shadows. Shadows are made when something blocks the light.

Luke explored shadows with an activity on the whiteboard.

Paul found that the grabbers make a good shape of a shadow!

We tried to make our shadows touch without making our actual bodies touch!

We were challenged to try and get away from our shadow - running away didn't work! Jack has worked out how - by jumping! When our feet aren't on the ground our shadow is not touching us.

We tried to make some interesting shapes for our shadows!

We also made shadow puppets. Dexter decided to make more than just a puppet - he made a puppet theatre!

Science Day!

We are having lots of fun today and doing some fantastic scientific learning - we're also dressed up as mad scientists!

Mrs Johnson from Sam's Simple Science came in this morning and showed us some amazing experiments!

First we explored what happens when you pour vinegar on bicarbonate of soda - look what happened!

Mrs Johnson put a stick in a balloon and it went pop! But then she did this...

Why do you think the balloon didn't pop this time?

We made lava lamps by pouring water into oil - first we had to measure the right amount of water!

We added some special tablets - look what happened!

After snack and a run around outside, we came back to try some different colour experiments. We looked at different colours and how they mix together, and whether you can separate the colours again afterwards!

We explored mixing colours in the paint and found out what happens when two colours are mixed together.

We used different colours of chalk and blended the colours with our fingers.

We mixed colours of sand together and found that if you mix yellow and blue sand, it doesn't make green sand - you can see the separate grains of blue and yellow!

"I played in the sand, I mixed the colours." - Summer

We used pipettes to mix different colours of water. Unlike with the sand, when you mixed yellow and blue water it made green water! Do you think we could separate the green water and make blue and yellow water again?

Mixing red and yellow food colouring... "It went orange." - Blue

We used the colour paddles to explore different colours and how they make new colours.

"Yellow and blue makes green!" - Luke

We also did this with different colours of cellophane and tissue paper.

We had some white dough and added some food colouring to it. We made red and yellow dough and mixed them together to make orange dough!

"It made orange." - Paul

We also looked at lots of things that were different colours and sorted them using the sorting trays.

"I was exploring the colours of different things and sorting them." - Fallon

We explored coloured magnets and tried to get the coloured balls onto the matching magnets!

"Look, I got the yellow one on here." - Clodagh-Boo

This afternoon we are going to be busy doing even more colourful science experiments!

Moon rock cakes!

This morning we made 'moon rock cakes'!

We learnt what a recipe is and that it tells us the ingredients we will need and the method (what to do). The recipe also tells us how much of something we'll need and we talked about how we could work this out. We agreed we needed to weigh the ingredients using the scales.

We learnt how to rub the flour and butter together using our fingertips.

Then we mixed in the sugar and the dried fruit.

After that we used a fork to beat the egg and talked about the different parts of an egg - the shell, the yolk and the white.

We stirred it again so all the ingredients were mixed together.

We took spoonfuls of the mixture and put it on a greased baking tray. 

Then we cooked them in the oven. When they were cooked we had to wait for them to cool down!

When they were cool enough, we ate them. They were delicious!

Here is the recipe for our moon rock cakes - why don't you try them at home!

Moon Rock Cakes

Ingredients

200g self raising flour

100g butter

75g caster sugar

100g mixed dried fruit

1 egg

4 tsp milk

Method

1.        Rub the butter into the flour.

2.        Add the sugar and the fruit.

3.        Mix in beaten egg and milk.

4.        Place spoonfuls of the mixture on a greased tray (they spread slightly).

5.        Bake at 200°C for 15-20 minutes.