We’re back again for the final half-term of the school year and it looked for a while like someone had stolen Summer! Never to be defeated, we had a fantastic time at Blackpool Zoo on Tuesday and the rain managed to stay away for most of the day. The children were amazing and asked some great questions throughout the day about the different animals we saw in the zoo. I was a little sad about the lack of Coypus at the zoo, but managed to give Mrs Keating all the links she needed to show the children what these lovely creatures look like.

 

The children have worked well on their phonics, reading and memory development and we used Kim’s Game to develop our visual memory. This is a good game you can play at home, where a number of items are placed on a tray and need to be observed for about 30 seconds; after this time, the children have another short delay before they need to draw or say the items they had seen. Improving visual memory has a good impact upon reading and spelling development as well as impacting upon many other aspects of life in general. Give it a go!

 

The A,G,T Groups have begun a new project this week. We are looking at Camouflage and are using Mind Mapping to support our learning. Mind Mapping was created by Tony Buzan and is a great way to record work, plan ideas and thoughts and to help us to remember information. A Mind Map is made up of words, colours, lines and pictures and are easy to create. More information and some great examples of Mind Maps can be found at: http://www.tonybuzan.com/about/mind-mapping/

 

The stars of the show this week, were Max (year 2), Ellie-Mae (year 3) and George (year 4), who have all asked some fantastic questions and created really good Mind Maps.

 

Time for this week’s challenge, we’ll have some number puzzles.

 

For the Infants:

Tilly’s parcel cost 95p to post.

She stuck on eight stamps.

Each stamp was either 10p or 5p.

How many of each stamp did Tilly stick on her parcel?

How many ways can you do it?

 

Junior Challenge:

In a 6 x 4 milk crate

 arrange 18 bottles

so that when added vertically or horizontally the number of bottles when added is always even.

 

 

Good luck and enjoy!