Fruity Fractions and Munchy Maths

On Thursday, we found a table of fruit in Ruma Piwakawaka.  Mrs Taylor asked, "I wonder what maths we can see?"

We noticed so many things.  There were more feijoas than persimmons and lemons.  The feijoas were the smallest fruit.  All of the fruits were round shapes.  The 4 leaves on the top of the persimmon looked symmetrical (reflected).

We thought the fruit looked and smelled delicious.  We wondered how we could share the fruit.  Hmm...

 So, we made some fresh fruit fractions.  (We also love making alliterations!)

When we cut the lemon in half, that made one piece out of two pieces (1/2) and another one piece out of two pieces (1/2).  We noticed that inside the lemon had triangular shapes that were reflected (symmetrical) and rotated.  We cut the lemon into quarters.

We cut the persimmon into halves and quarters.  The persimmon was symmetrical inside too!  After that something funny happened... some sneaky earwigs crawled out from under the leaves.  We took them to the garden so that they could find a new home.

We also cut the feijoas into fractions.  The fruit smelled and looked delicious, so we gobbled it up.

What yummy maths!

PMP

We have been working hard at PMP, carefully practicing each skill.  When we jump, we use both feet to push from the ground together.  We land like we are riding on a silent motorbike - toes, heels, knees, squeeze!

We encourage our left brain and right brain to work together when we march, crawl and climb - opposite arm, opposite leg.

Our eyes carefully watch the ball as it rolls across the floor.  We are developing our eye tracking, which helps us when we read and follow the words on the page.  We also track with our eyes when we throw beanbags, follow floating feathers and balloons, and throw and catch balls.

PMP is lots of fun.  Thank you to our amazing parent helpers who support us with this part of our learning.

Rock Stars

During Ruma Piwakawaka and Ruma Ruru's music time
we were able to begin to learn how to play the ukelele.

             

 
There is quite alot to think about when you play a ukelele.

We quite liked looking at the animals that help hold the strings up.

                              

                         
               Strumming is one of the activities we are practising.

Helping each other to learn is really important too.

On Monday mornings after school waiata we meet together as a Junior Team. We practice some of the skills we will need for our PMP activities during the week.

We practiced heel toe walking. 

It is pretty tricky but if you focus you can do it!

Your heel has to touch the tip of your toe.

 

We also practiced marching. 

We had to make sure we were using opposite arm and opposite leg.

It is great when we listen to our teachers and helpers instructions when they try to help us.

Cambridge History Trip

On Thursday, we went on a Mystery History trip of Cambridge to find out more about the significant places in our town.  We were lucky to have Tereora from the Te Awamutu Museum to lead us on our journey and to tell us many stories about our place.

We began at Lake Karapiro.  We found out that "Karapiro" means "stinky rocks".  Tereora told us that before the dam was built, many years ago there was a war here along the Waikato River.  Some people died and their bodies were burnt on some big rocks.  These rocks then had a bad smell, and so the area became know as Karapiro ("stinky rocks").  Some of these rocks are now placed at the entrance of the Don Rolland Centre at Lake Karapiro.  

Next we went to the trenches and had a look at what it might have been like to be a soldier or nurse in the war, living in and fighting from the trenches.  Tereora told us that the trenches in the world wars in Europe would have been very muddy and there were lots of lots of rats.  We thought it would have been pretty horrible to have to stay in those trenches.  

   

   

There were so many leaves by the trenches, we just couldn't resist throwing them in the air.  We gathered up big piles of leaves, counted to 3, and threw them in the air.  And then, we gathered up more leaves and threw them at the grown ups!  It was SO funny.

   

After that, we ate our morning tea and went into town to begin our scavenger hunt.

   

We had a lot of fun finding significant places around Cambridge.  We tried our best to stay dry, even though the clouds had decided to drop some rain on us.

   

Our parent helpers were amazing!  It was fun using Tereora's iPads to do the scavenger hunt.

Finally, we went back to school to dry out.

The next day, we shared our learning by drawing maps of the significant places that we found out about.  Come and look at our fantastic maps in Ruma Piwakawaka.