Geometry P1

In primary 1 we have been learning about shapes - focusing mainly on triangles, squares, rectangle and circles.

Our maths lessons have been combined with art lessons and we are currently working on creating a Kandinsky inspired shape mobile, which we spotted on Pinterest.

As I only work with the class one day a week we will be doing one shape a week for 4 weeks and then combining the shapes into our mobiles. I think they will look fantastic in the classroom with the nice bright colours we are using.

The children have made a great start to their mobiles and tried really hard to keep their squares the right shape. We also got to use the brand new paints and brushes we received after moving into our new school!

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Nim's Island Paper Mache

Last term we completed our work on our paper mache islands.


The students had already created their topographic islands but still needed to mache and paint them.


We decided to use PVA glue mixed with water as the adhesive in the mache stage. I was initially apprehensive about how well it would work as I hadn't used this before and we had a rather watery mixture but once the glue had dried it gave a good result.


Some of the students struggled with the idea of only using small pieces of paper, and some didn't smooth their paper down quite enough so ended up with a rough texture for painting.


Then in the last week we painted our models. This was a great activity and the students were only provided with the primary colours and white. It took a bit of conversation for the students to understand why I had chosen those particular colours - not just because they would be good island colours.


The pupils really enjoyed getting to mix the colours and discover what they would make. They painted their islands and all looked fantastic once they had finished. We had a mixture of ideas in the islands but the whole point of this project was that they were to use their imagination so all ideas were accepted.


I would definitely do this activity again with another class, or with a different design.

Plant Science

Wow! Our plants have grown so much.

This week we had another look at our plants in their mazes. Most of the plants have now grown through the maze and out the top.
 
 



Hopefully this experiment will solidify the children's understanding that plants can move. I think it is important for students to have experiential activities to demonstrate concepts rather than me just telling them that plants can move and expecting them to believe it.

Unfortunately one of the plants was broken when we were looking at them. But this has given us an opportunity to see if they will continue to grow or not.

We continued our observation table and compared the lengths of when we measured last week with the lengths this week. Some groups of students were unable to measure their plants because the ruler wasn't long enough. They were able to problem solve to use two rulers to help them.

Art and Geometry

This term I have been working on creating medicine bottles for their novel study of George's Marvellous Medicine. We completed ours this week and they have been displayed in the school. I was particularly impressed with the student's creativity in this activity. They were given the brief of creating a medicine bottle
from a piece of A4 paper using pastels to colour in. They came up with the rest all by themselves.

This class has also been working with some classes on geometry and we are finishing off our unit on 3D shapes by making models out of 3D junk objects we have around our houses.

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Once the students have completed their models they will fill in a shape analysis page which I can use to assess the knowledge they have developed over the sessions of this topic.