Arty Targets

In ICT we have made some word clouds to remind us of our personal targets to display around our class target board. We personalised them with words about our interests.

We made these at a website called tagxedo.

Electrical safety at home.

Today we did some more work on circuits, introducing switches and seeing what happens to the brightness of lightbulbs when we add more to the circuit.  We also looked at a website about safety.  The Monkeys asked me to put a link on the blog so that they could have a look at home... so here it is.

http://www.switchedonkids.org.uk/house.html

This website requires a flash plug in- may not work on some tablets and smartphones.

MONKEYS DISCOVER TIME MACHINE!

This morning, as we were busy looking at the timetable and finding our what our learning was going to be like today, Mrs Donegan came and told us about a curious discovery that she had made.  She had gone out to feed the guinea pigs and found this...

What could it be?  It was too big to fit through the door so it must have landed or appeared there.  We went back to class and thought about some clues... The clock, the keyboard, the wires, the light bulbs... all things that led us to different conclusions.

One of us went on a special job to ask all the other classes if they had put the machine there, but they hadn't.

We were left to mull it over for the rest of the morning.

Message from a time-lord!

After dinner, Mr Littlewood told us that we had received a message about the special machine.  It revealed that it was in fact a broken time machine!

If the link above doesn't work, click here to view it.

The message said we had to learn about circuits so that we could help repair the time machine.  Mr Littlewood didn't know what to do so he gave us lots of wires and batteries and bulbs to see if any of us could work out how a circuit works.

 

 

After we had found out for ourselves how circuits work through trial and error, we made circuit diagrams to help the time-lord mend his time machine.

We thought of some class 'top tips' for the time-lord and left him a message... let's see if the machine is still there tomorrow.

Fairy house building

Today we received another little letter from the fairies in the bungalow garden tree.  It said that due to the recent high winds, the tree that they live in was no longer big enough or strong enough to live in any more.  They had seen our junk model houses and were really impressed so they asked us to build them some new houses in the local park. 

There were some rules though.

• Use only natural materials, as using things like yoghurt pots would be littering
• Use only 'found' natural materials... don't pick any living things

So, we went for a walk to the park and used our knowledge of materials to make houses.  We tried to find materials that were strong and waterproof for the outside, and soft and warm for the inside.

Here are some pictures.



We also had a play in the playground before walking back to school!

Tiny house building.

This afternoon we used our knowledge of materials and their properties, and our designs from Tuesday, to build our own elf and fairy houses.  They had to be sturdy, waterproof and warm.

Here's some photos of the process, and some of the finished results.

 

Material girls and boys

After the Easter holiday we have been carrying on our Little Kingdoms project.  We are going to make little houses for the elves and fairies to live in.

The first thing we had to do was find out the properties of differenr materials.  We sorted them in to different groups such as water-proof and not water-proof; transparent and not see through; flexible or stiff; soft or hard etc.

 

 

We used our new knowledge to think about how we would build a house for the elves and fairies out of junk modelling materials.  We drew our designs and labelled them, showing which materials we planned to use and why.

I'm using cotton wool for the bed because it is soft.

 

Lollypop sticks will make a strong frame.

 

Today we are building our designs.  Check back later to see how we've gone on.

Giant writing

This morning in 'Everybody Writes' we did some giant writing.  As part of our Little Kingdoms topic we have done lots to tiny writing and little notes to fairies and elves... but what if we were the little ones and we had to write a message for a giant?

Imagine a giant is up there in his cloudy kingdom waiting for a beanstalk to grow high enough for him to climb down!  We decided to write really forceful sentences using exclamation marks to keep him away.  We went out in to the yard and used big chalk and squirty bottles to write our messages so that he could see them from the clouds.

 

At the end of the lesson we all planted our own beans and put them in the new greenhouse in our classroom.