Month: October 2012

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A Tasty Maths Lesson: A Party for ‘Smarties’

A party for ‘Smarties’

Smarties
Smarties by Quimby on Flickr

These parties are great fun,
but students have to work for their reward!.

One needs a small box of mini ‘smarties’ (66kcal per box) for each child in the class. I usually buy two multipacks containing twenty boxes approximately. I time this lesson for just after the children’s own lunchtime.

Important to check for any child who is allergic to chocolate.
They can have jellies instead perhaps.

Before the children can eat the sweets
they have to do some work.

Here are some suggestions:

You might want to use just SOME of them!
The activities chosen will depend on the age of the children.

General Observation

Look at the box
Can you find the list of ingredients?

How many ingredients are there?
What are they?

Are you surprised by any of the ingredients?
What do you think red cabbage is used for?
What other ingredients give the colours do you think?
What do you think the beeswax does?
Did you know spirulina is a seaweed? It gives a blue colour.
There is information on the back of the bag about other natural colouring used.

What percentage of these sweets is milk chocolate?
What percentage is the rest of the ingredients?

Who is the manufacturer of these sweets?

Shape
What shape is it? (cuboid)
How many faces has it? (6)
How many edges? (12)
How many corners? (8)

Open up the box.
What shapes can you find? How many rectangles are there?

Number
Pour out the contents.
Are the colours of the contents similar to the colours on the box?
How does the size compare?
Estimate the number of sweets in your box.
Now count them.
How close was your estimate?
How many sweets does each child have?
Are there the same number in each box?
Why do you think this happens?

Who had the most sweets in their box?
Who had the least?

Can you work out the average number of sweets in each box.

There are approximately 20 boxes of sweets in each minipack.
Can you estimate how many sweets are in a full minipack?

With a younger class you can practice adding and taking away using the sweets.
There is also potential for talking about
– tens and units
– and sharing/division.

Data
Count the different colours.
How many colours are there?
How many yellow sweets have you in your box.
How many red? pink? orange? green? purple etc.

Lay them out like a pictogram.
Smarties Graph #3
Smarties Graph #3 by Sneeu on Flickr

Which is the most common colour in each child’s box?
Which is the most common colour in all the boxes?
The children can create patterns and pictures with the contents of their box.

And that’s not all!
Probability
A Lesson on Probability from ehow.com

Fractions
Fractions on primaryresources.co

Language
If your class can resist eating the sweets for this length of time you can talk about
– the five senses:
sight,
taste,
touch,
sound (of the sweets rattling in the box)
and smell (there isn’t one.. initially at any rate!)
– Words to describe the
sensation of the sweets dissolving or crunching in the mouth.
texture
taste
Sometimes too there are jokes or riddles on the back of the box.

Music Potential for work on ‘composition’
using voice and sweets in their box as a percussion instrument.

Science
You could also talk about
the journey the sweets will make through the digestive system.
and the job saliva does in the digestion process
How long can you make a sweet last in your mouth?

Mindful of healthy eating concerns I restrict giving out sweets to twice in the year:

Once before the Halloween midterm,

when the class earn a ‘Party for ‘Smarties”

as ‘Golden Time’ for hard work and good behaviour.

We will also have a pirate themed treasure hunt in the Summer term where the ‘treasure’ will be edible.

‘All you need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt’.

Charles M. Schulz

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A D.I.Y Recorder Concert for the Parents of 2nd Class, Room 6


Great work Abi!

Dear Parent,

Your child is going home with
their recorder
their music book ‘Recorder from the Beginning, Book 1’
and the cd from the back of the book.

We have been learning the recorder for six weeks.
Teacher thinks that Room 6 are a musical class.

Recorder class is often one of the most pleasant times of the day as we all work together to make music.

We hope you don’t mind too much that we haven’t been bringing our recorder home to practice!
Now we should be able to play you our repertoire using the backing track on the cd.

We should be able to play as far as the tune called ‘Chicka Hanka’
and perhaps ‘Chatter with the Angels’.
Certainly we should certainly be able to play: ‘Hot Cross Buns’.

Just in case this plan does not work out, this is Plan B.
Perhaps you would like to listen to a podcast of 2nd Class Room 6
playing a tune on the recorder.

listen to ‘Friday Evening Concert’ on Audioboo

Teacher feels that many of the children are playing ‘by ear’ very successfully
but between now and Christmas we will work on reading music.

Who knows what we might achieve by June!


Well done Owen.
Create your own Animation

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Prayer Service for the People we love who have gone home to God

Good morning & welcome to the school hall on this special day

when we remember the people we love who have gone home to God.

 

Sign of the Cross x3 (God came down…In the name of the Father… As Gaeilge)

 

Candle Prayer; ‘Chase away the darkness. Fill the world with light, be a little candle flame and shine out bright’.

First song: This little light of mine.

 

Why do we light a candle? To remind us that God our Father in Heaven is always with us.

Song; If I go climbing/rowing/swimming/ driving/ flying/ sleeping

 

Now it is time to say GOOD MORNING to God our Father in Heaven and to remember how much he loves us.

Father in Heaven, you love me…

I’ll try to please you Father. That is not always easy.

But if we do make mistakes and are sorry in our hearts, then God our Father in Heaven will always forgive us.

 

So let’s say SORRY to God

O my God I thank you for loving me.

I am sorry for all my sins, for not loving others and not loving you.

Help me to live like Jesus and not sin again. Amen

 

And now it is time to say THANKS to God

God our Father I come to say, thank you for your love today.

Thank you for my family and all the friends you give to me.

Guard me in the dark of night and in the morning, please send your light. Amen.

 

What day is it? Month?

Next month: November is the month of the holy souls

and we believe that just as Jesus died and rose again to share new life with God Our Father in Heaven;

so too are all our loved ones happily living their new life with God

 

Good News! The Bible tells us there will be no more tears in heaven.

Those who have gone to heaven will never be hungry or thirsty because God is there and he minds them.

Jesus tells us not to worry.

He says if God looks after the flowers in the fields and the birds in the trees so well,

surely he will look after us even better.

He says the flowers in the fields don’t worry

so why should we.

Song; The Flowers in the Fields

Even though we cannot see the people we love who are in Heaven, we remember them.

We have photos to help us remember, and memorial cards, we light candles.

When my Granny died I planted lots and lots of bulbs and every spring when they flower I think of her.

Now I need some helpers to help me plant some bulbs.

Repeat after me; God through your goodness we have these little bulbs to plant.

God we ask you to care for these daffodil bulbs and help them to grow.

God with the work of our hands we have planted these bulbs.

Keep these bulbs safe.

Watch over them through the dark of winter, until the light of Spring shines again Amen

 

Now try this one; The little bulbs are now fast asleep safe in the earth they lie

The children have covered them over and said little brown bulbs goodbye

The bulbs are asleep, but the sunshine and rain will help them wake up to new life in spring.

Even though we cannot see the people we love who are in Heaven, we remember them.

We know they are with us always. They never go far away. They are our friends in heaven, there to help us.

We can be happy, remembering that and remembering them. So let’s finish with a happy song.

Final song: Jesus is my friend

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First Communion In Our Parish… And Around The World

We are preparing for our First Holy Communion in May.

Fiona’s Dad, Dale, very kindly created a slide show for us. It shows children from all over the world celebrating their First Communion:

First Communion Around the World on Prezi

In ways these children are the same as us and in ways they are different, but we are all on the same ‘faith journey’.

Remember our next ‘Do It In Memory of Me’ Mass is on Sunday 28th October 2012.

In other news 2nd Class Room 6 has become just a little bit famous:

Share the experience of our faith journey on the Parish Website

We will be making more contributions to this website as our ‘faith journey’ progresses.

There is lots of information about the ‘Do It In Memory of Me’ Programme on the parish website also.
This includes the dates of the masses.

‘Do This In Memory of Me’ Programme

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Visualizing ‘It Was A Dark And Stormy Night’ by Allan Ahlberg

We are working on comprehension strategies

in reading, following the

‘Building Bridges of Understanding’ programme.

 

We spent the first six weeks of the school term

predicting what was going to happen next

in the stories we read.

Now we are adding ‘visualization’ to our skill set.

Teacher has read six short novels in class this year.

This one is our favourite by far.

 

“…Outside a light wind was blowing

the last of the storm clouds away.

In the east there was a glow,

and streaks of pink and violet

and duck-egg green tinged

the darker edge of the sky”.

 

From: ‘It Was A Dark And Stormy Night’

by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

 

Teacher thinks Nicole has visualized the sky at dawn, very well:

We all worked hard on ‘visualizing’ as you will see:

‘It Was A Dark And Stormy Night’ by Allan Ahlberg 

As always I would remind you to supervise your child when they are online.

Jake visualizes ‘The Pirate Ship’.

 

Click here to see our book review and to hear our podcast.

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Book Review: It was a Dark and Stormy Night’ by Allan Ahlberg

Teacher read  ‘It Was A Dark And Stormy Night’

to the children in 2nd Class, Room 6.

‘It was A Dark And Stormy Night’ by Allan Ahlberg

It was a big hit.

It is a ‘laugh out loud’ book with plenty of scope

for dramatisation and funny voices.

 

Great fun to read aloud in class!

It was impossible to predict what was going to happen next in the story.

But guessing was fun too.

 

Book Review by Jack S

Antonio is the hero.

He is eight, the same age as me.

.

Antonio is captured by brigands.

The Chief of the Brigands is bored.

He tells Antonio to tell a story to pass the time.

 

Antonio’s story is about

pirates

and sharks,

crocodiles

and killer parrots.

There is a castle in his story with a ‘Thingy’ in the moat.

 

Antonio uses the story telling

to distract the brigands

so he can escape,

and get back to to his own family.

 

I would recommend this book to children my age. It made me laugh.

Create your own Animation

Finally we made a podcast of what we thought was best about this book.

listen to ‘Room 6 Book Review’ on Audioboo

If you would like to comment,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and a comment box will appear.

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Have you got the X Factor?

Further information about the Kilcoole Feis arrived today:
The cost is five euro per competition.
Teacher is now collecting names of children who are interested.

Each child would need to be committed to learning
and practicing their poem or song at home with their parents.

Ms Ahern will do some coaching with the children
and Teacher will go over the poems and songs with the children competing,
in front of the class to get the children used to performing with an audience.

Putting performances on a podcast may also be useful,
so that your child can listen back to themselves
and see how they might improve.

However most of the work will need to be done at home.

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What is Class Dojo?

Some parents have heard about Class Dojo from their children and were wondering what it was about.

Class Dojo is an online behavioural chart.  We used it last year in Room Six and found it helpful.

Where behaviour is concerned I would like to focus on the positive and ‘catch the children being good’.

We would all like a Happy Class.

A Happy Class does need rules and boundaries.

There is a review of this website here:
http://www.seomraranga.com/2011/09/guest-post-class-dojo/