Little Acorns- Valentines biscuits
We have been making Valentines day biscuits at Little Acorns! The children followed a simple recipe and carefully weighed out the ingredients. We talked about how the mixture was changing as we added the different ingredients. The dough was rolled out and cut into heart shapes. Once baked in the oven, the children decorated their heart shaped biscuit with pink icing. Don’t they look delicious!
Year 3 have been tackling the tricky subject of fractions! They have been showing their understanding of parts and wholes all week and today they began working on tenths. The children were able to use images and express the fractions they could see in many different ways. Their work was amazing; deeper understanding was shown by all.
Year 3 have started a new using on fractions today. They started by exploring the part-whole relationship. The children could recognise what made the whole and then identify part of the whole. This understanding will be really important when understanding fractions.
Today, Year 3 have begun their new topic, Heroes and Villains, by pretending to be villains and trying to send secret messages using codes. First, they learnt how to use a code wheel. Then they made different invisible inks one from lemon juice and the other from bicarbonate and soda.
Fantastic mathematical reasoning going on in Year 3 today with children exploring multiplication using the bar model and the area model to make connections.
Year 3 have spent some time this morning using different representations of multiplication and division to explore their understanding. Amazing explanations of how to using models has developed their understanding!
Year 5 have had a go at CiP words in maths today to help them understand a variety of mathematical vocabulary that sometimes can confuse them. This will help then children when different vocabulary comes up in questions and will give them more confidence in what’s required of them to work out the question.
Year 5 had an interesting afternoon looking at grand Tudor houses and finding the area of the rectangles they could find within the house. Some children really challenged themselves to estimate the irregular shape areas as well.
This afternoon Year 2 were provided with coordinates on a map and they had to work in teams to collect hidden letters from around the school. The aim was to be the most accurate, fastest and collaborate. Well done to those teams who completed it but especially to our teams from Palm Class who came first and second place and a team from Apple who came third. What skills did you use to find the hidden letters.
This week in Year 6 we have enjoyed exploring and expanding our mathematical boundaries through our ‘Week of Inspirational Maths’! We have been finding out more about how to grow our maths brain and create and strengthen our neural pathways. 
This morning in Oak class we edited and re-drafted sections of our last big writes. We made lots of progress with our purple progress pens using our headlines and collaborative learning.
Year 2 have been looking at multiplication. We know that the words times, multiple, groups of and lots of can all be used. We have been looking at making arrays. What repeated addition number sentence could you also write for them?
This morning, Ebony Class investigated converting between decimals, percentages and fractions. We collaborated really well to solve a murder mystery using our knowledge and also used dienes to represent whole and decimal numbers.
Well done Ebony class – super problem solving and collaboration!
Redwood Class have been using lots of different methods to help them learn their times tables today.
This afternoon we collaborated to think of as many conjunctions, verbs, adjectives and nouns! We used our colourful semantic cards to help us!
Today Year One we’re representing numbers using diennes. We had to identify how many tens and ones in each number.
Which of these numbers has 4 tens? How do you know?
73 45 24 47 14
Our Maths targets and arithmetic lessons are all currently based on counting in 10s. We have been using hundred squares, diennes, and 10p coins. Miss Cleasby has even been trying to trick us. She has made us close our eyes and just listen to the coins falling into the piggy bank.
What did you notice? What patterns did you find?
Maple and Willow Class set to work this afternoon measuring the height and length of all things dinosaur. How did using the tens help? Where do you need to start measuring from? What did you count in?
This morning during our arithmetic some of us had a go at being the ‘teacher’. We were able to explain to our friends how we solved a problem and arrived at our answer. 
Year 3 have been focusing on multiplication and times tables this week. Here are a couple of the activities that we have done today: loop cards and a times table game on the smart board.
This morning we had a maths carousel where we got to spend 20 mins on three different activities. We answered questions and we explained our reasoning. We are becoming increasingly confident using the word ‘because’ in our maths learning to explain how we solved problems and arrived at our answers! 
We had a great time learning about capacity, temperature and weight today! All of the children got hands on, experimenting using the different resources and thinking hard about what happened in each activity and WHY!
Which activity was your favourite?
This week we have been looking at repeating patterns, in nature, art and making our own. Can you make a repeating pattern?
We have been learning about doubling the sides of 2 D shapes!
Today Year Four had a lot of fun and a fair amount of frustration trying to find a PERFECT NUMBER! Have a look at their work, can you find a Perfect Number? 
Today, Year 4 have been exploring mental images of number. We have been looking at decimal numbers and how we can represent them using diennes.
Today Maple and Willow have been number detectives. We had to find the missing number.
7 + ? =9
7 and something is the same as 9.
How would you work it out?
Did you hold 7 in your head and count on 2 more?
How do theses pieces of numicon help?
Today year 1 have been looking at learning positional and directional language to help us move our bee-bots. We practised moving left, right, forwards and backwards as well as turning different amounts before using what we had learned to move the bee-bots.
Can you remember how to make our bee-bots turn?
What was your favourite part about learning to move the bee-bots?
This morning, some of year 3 have been using their reasoning skills in Maths. They had a collection of statements and had to decide whether they were always true, sometimes true or never true. There were lots of great discussions!
This week in our maths learning we have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes! We have been looking at similarities and differences and the number of sides different shapes have! Can you spot any shapes at home?
Take a look at the activities we are getting up to in our math carousel this week. We have been learning our number formation, practising our counting in 1s and 2s, representing numbers using resources and measuring how far different cars travel when they go down a ramp.
How do you know which car travelled the furthest? What’s the quickest way of making 23 using resources? Why?
Our arthimetic focus has been finding one more and one less than a number. Can you write the number sentences to go with this?
This week in maths, we have been using our understanding of place value to play this game from Nrich. There are several variations of the game…
You could be nice, or you could be nasty!
Why not challenge a family member?
Following on from our Maths this morning, we played a game of ‘Spin to Win’. It was Oak Class pupils against Miss Tapp. We had to use our knowledge of place value to try to make the biggest three-digit number. Oak Class were on fire and managed to beat Miss Tapp!!
Yesterday, we looked at adding different numbers together. We had to choose two, make it with numicon and write the answer. After each one we took a picture before starting the next. Later we used the app pic collage to display our learning.
Today, we made images with and took pictures of 2D shapes. Later, we built on our pic collage skills to write the shapes names as well as having photos.
After reading the book ‘How Many Jellybeans?’, Cherry Class have been measuring things using jellybeans.
Did you know that…
* a dictionary is 14 jellybeans?
* a post it note is 6 jellybeans?
* the jellybean book is 27 jellybeans?
* one of our class is 86 jellybeans?
* Miss Morgan is 128 jellybeans?
What a sweet class we are!
Cherry Class rose to the challenge today! They were told the number and shape of a 3D shape’s faces and then had to make the shape!
We were adding and subtracting today, in Mrs Simister’s Store. Children were having to find different combinations of coins to pay with, as a well as working out what change they were owed.
Year 3 started learning about measuring capacity today, including reading different scales and converting between millilitres and litres.
Today we ordered numbers from smallest to biggest. This might sound easy but the learning really happened when we asked the children to explain how they knew. As you can see, these young mathematicians have described their thinking wonderfully.
This morning, a very excited Cherry Class played the maths games that they had designed and made for home learning. The children were really engaged and enjoyed playing each other’s games.
Apple Class took over maths teaching today. Why don’t you ask them what they can teach you?
Halves, quarters, eighths and even sixteenths of shapes were investigated today, during our maths session. Some children even discovered equivalent fractions! Excellent stuff Willow Class!
Willow class explored different activities that they could achieve in a minute, today.
We had great fun completing these activities and look forward to reflecting on what we have learnt, tomorrow.
This morning in Year 2 we used smarties with our fractions learning for Mega Maths! We found and wrote fractions of a set of objects!
We all really enjoyed using the smarties to help us, especially eating them afterwards!
Year Two have been using smarties to find a fraction of a set. We looked at the most popular colour and the least popular.
Have a look below at some of our learning and reflections.
Later, we spilt the whole set into thirds, sharing them equally between our group and enjoyed eating them all up.
This morning in maths we looked at fractions of a number! We practiced on our whiteboards and all discussed our answers and how we got there.
Today, year 6 have been collaborating with their peers to problem solve whether the different nets worked to make a cube.
There was lots of rich maths discussion and problem solving to be had and some great investigations!
Using our arithmetic skills to continue number patterns, improving our time on the clock to solve number bonds to 20 on the iPad, playing addition and subtraction ‘tug of war’ games on number lines, adding and subtracting using number lines and using number tiles to create our own giant number lines to add and subtract have been keeping us all very busy in our numeracy session today!
Well done Maple Class. You are all super stars! I’m so impressed and proud to see so many of you continue to challenge yourselves in your own learning. How will you challenge yourself tomorrow?
We have been investigating the properties of 3D shapes.
We had to find the number of faces, edges and vertices for a variety of prisms, pyramids and polyhedra
We noticed we could use formula to help us. For example, to find the number of edges for a triangular based pyramid, you can double the number of sides of the 2D base. (3 x 2 = 6)
To find the number of vertices of any prism, you double the number of sides of the 2D face. E.g. Hexagonal prism is 6 x 2 = 12
What else did you find?
Today we used Cuisenaire to make halves, quarters and thirds. We reflected on what we had learnt from using this to help us with our fractions. We found that halves, quarters and thirds need to be equal sizes. We then cut chocolate rolls into thirds to share equally with our friends.
