Thursday, August 2, 2018

Exploring with Measurement

We've had a busy start to the term measuring all sorts of things.

We read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and used Giant feet to measure how many Giant feet tall the beanstalk was. The challenge was that they only had 5 Giant feet.




Those who were able to figure it out then got to go outside and measure how many Giant feet away other things are. This group is measuring how many Giant feet away the water fountain is from Room 16.




We went outside to find something that was the same length as the metre stick. Only one of us found something!



The children explored around the classroom looking for things that were bigger and smaller than the ruler. They drew pictures of the things that they found.




This activity was a real challenge! The children had to put themselves in order from shortest to tallest without talking.



They also measured how many clips tall and wide their dragon was. They were given clips of different size and string to use while measuring. Afterwards we talked about why it would be a good idea to use the same size clips to measure and whether we should be including the curl of the tail in our calculations. We also talked about how we could use the string to help us measure.





Yesterday the children were given scissors, a stapler and a piece of A3 paper. The only instruction they were given was to "make the longest paper chain". They were divided into groups of 2 or 3 and had to share a stapler between 2 groups. It was interesting to listen to them plan how they were going to do it and watch how they went about creating their chains.







Today we compared the lengths of the chains. We talked about why some of the paper chains were longer than others and came to the conclusion that the groups that cut longer, thinner strips were able to make longer chains. We also discussed what it was like working in groups and how hard it was sometimes to have to share the stapler with another group.

Back in Time at Ferrymead

We had a wonderful introduction to Communication on our trip to Ferrymead. We traveled back in time to learn about how people communicated i...