Investigation Week

At the end of each term it is investigation week across the whole school so we have enjoyed a jam packed week full of problem solving, puzzles and investigations in Year 1. It all kicked off with a visit and fantastic workshop from the Happy Puzzle Company. We had to work as a team to solve different puzzles, find out what was making the problem tricky to solve and work out a way to resolve it.

Then throughout the week we worked as a whole class, in small groups, in a pairs and on our own to solve different maths puzzles and problems. Here are some of the investigations and problems we have completed. Maybe you could try any you didn’t do this week at home.

Four-pin bowling: We labelled four bowling pins with the numbers 1 to 4. We then had to work out which pins we had to knock over with our beanbag to make different totals.

Gob-stopper: We pretended we bought a sweet or toy that cost 6p and paid for it exactly. We tried to find all the possible ways we could make 6p using different coins.

 

Pick a pair: We had the numbers 1,4,2, and 8. We picked a pair of numbers, added them together, found the total and wrote the number sentence. We then picked a different pair of numbers. We tried to be systematic to make sure we found all of the possibilities.

Sum up: We had the numbers 2,4,8 and 3. We had to make the totals 9,10,11,12 and 13 using only these numbers.

Ride at the fair: Lucy had a ride at the fair. Her mum asked her to pay less than 20p towards it. Lucy paid exactly 3 coins towards the ride. We had to find all of the different possible ways Lucy could have paid her mum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lila and the Secret of Rain

We have been reading a lovely book in Year 1 this week called "Lila and the Secret of Rain." We enjoyed sharing our first thoughts about the story and telling each other what we liked and didn't like. 

"I liked finding out about life in a different country," Ernest. 

"I liked discovering the secret of rain!" Tenzin. 

"I didn't like the part where Lila overhead her mother saying without water there would be no life," Kyla. 

We then wrote some fantastic poems using similes to say thank you for the rain. Here are some of the ideas we came up with as a class:

Thank you for the rain,
It looks like shiny wet pebbles, 
It sounds like children playing catch, 
It feels like one of my mummy's kisses,
It smells like a summer's evening,
It tastes like a sweet pear. 

We then made our own rainsticks. We looked carefully at African fabrics and copied the patterns using paint. We then covered one end of our tube and poured in some rice before covering the other end. We carefully wrapped our painting around the tube and had fun playing with our rainsticks! 

African masks!

Wow! Year 1 created some fantastic African masks for homework last week. We really enjoyed sharing our masks and telling everyone how we made them. The teachers were so impressed with the effort you had all gone to so well done children and grown ups! Lots of children chose to look at different African masks on the internet and carefully copied the colours and patterns they saw, some children created  African animal masks like the ones we looked at in school and lots of children got really creative and used lots of the lovely art supplies they have at home. We have created an amazing display outside the Year 1 classrooms showing our the fantastic masks. 

Handa's Surprise

This week we are linking our topic learning about Africa to the book 'Handa's Surprise.' We know this story really well and thoroughly enjoyed reading it again today. We had a chance to look at all the different fruits in the story and came up with lots of different adjectives to describe what they look, feel and smell like. This afternoon we enjoyed our food technology lesson where we made fruit kebabs and we couldn't wait to get home and eat our tasty creations!

Go Wild in Africa!

For the last couple of weeks and for the rest of this term our topic in Year 1 is Africa. Last week we focused our learning on the book 'We're going on a lion hunt.' We noticed that the patterned language and repeated phrases made it really easy for us to learn the story and we even put actions to it to help us retell it. We then had a go at writing our own versions of the story.

We have also been doing lots of Geography learning and have found out where Africa is and can locate it on a map. We know that Africa is a continent and is made up of lots of different countries. We have been learning about the cultures and traditions in different African countries. We looked carefully at what some people in Africa wear and were particularly interested in the jewelery so we had a go at making our own African necklaces. We painted pasta and then made our necklaces by creating a repeating pattern. 

Enjoying the sunshine

We have been making the most of the beautiful weather in Year 1 recently and have been taking our learning outdoors. We have been planting seeds and finding out what they needs to grow, we have been taking books outside and enjoying reading in the glorious sunshine as well as making number rubbings, making words with the magnetic and jelly letters and practicing our new tricky words that we have up in the Year 1 area.

 

Spring has sprung!

We were very lucky last week in Year 1 as we had a visit from some baby chicks! A couple of our children have chickens at home and they have been waiting for the eggs to hatch. We have been hearing all about looking after the eggs in the incubator and we were so excited to finally meet the chicks! We are hoping to see them again soon when they have grown a little bigger and stronger.