Residential Watercolour artwork

What great 7 and 8 year old artists we have in class!

Have a look:

Day 2, Residential 2010

What a busy day!

Swimming, treasure hunt, football, table tennis, teddy home building, water colour painting...it makes me tired just thinking about it.

A big thankyou to Miss Jan in particular for all of her huge efforts.

Well done to all the children for making the most of their time here.

We have just had the talent show and 3W performers Punn and Bua shone with their fabulous violin recital. The children are settling to sleep as I type.

We will be back tomorrow, but until then, I hope you enjoy these photos:

Residential day 1

If a picture says a thousand words, then here are 76,000 words.

We're having a great time on our residential visit.

As I write, peaceful crickets chirp in the distance and the sound of noisy children is absent...it is bedtime and, fingers crossed, everyone is asleep...more news tomorrow!

Enjoy the photos.

Shadows around school

Look at these shadows from school.
Can you tell what made them?
What shape are they?

Measuring Capacity accurately

We made some jelly yesterday because:

• it tastes good
• when cool it is refreshing
• it helped us learn to measure the right amounts of water (capacity) using L and ml
• we were learning about reading and writing instructions and jelly has easy to understand instructions.

Miss Jo, Miss Rachel and Miss Isabelle helped us measure the right amounts and stir it.

First of all I didn't read the instructions and made one really badly.  I used cold water, and put in the wrong amount.  The jelly I made was DISGUSTING.

Which other recipes have you made at home?

How to make Cannonball Slug Pie

What you need 
tomato, ketchup, salt, slugs x 5 not dead, 1 plain pie, cannonball  1000 grams (1kg)

How to make Cannonball  Slug Pie

• First you get the plain  pie 
• Next  stuff   all  the  slugs inside the pie
• After that  you  start to squirt  all the tomato ketchup on  the pie
• Then you pour half the cup of the salt
• And then  carefully lift the 1000 gram  cannon  ball and put it inside.

Samuel lee   3w




  

Need practice with measuring size and weight? Look no further

Bigger box pinhole camera - better image with smaller hole and longer box

After school finished yesterday I looked at the partial eclipse using the cardboard roll pinhole camera

and using the cuboid box camera (see picture below)

...the images were small...how could I make the image larger?

Mr Parkin also took a picture using a digital camera with a coloured filter...but the image was unclear and too bright to see...see below

I thought for a few seconds and realised that if I made the box longer and kept the hole very small it would let the beams of light from the sun be further apart when they hit the screen...this would make the image bigger!

Below is a photo taken using the larger camera.  I enlarged it using photo software (picasa) but it looks a lot clearer.

You can see the grainy texture of the tracing paper, which I used as a screen.

This is the original photo of the screen before using picasa:

Did you manage to take any good pictures from your pinhole cameras?

Inventors

Which inventions can I think of?

If you can find out when these inventions were invented, please comment.

We can't wait to find out!

Partial Solar Eclipse today - this afternoon - Bangkok

There is a partial solar eclipse due today.  This means that the moon will be travelling in between the sun (the big light source in the sky) and the earth (which is acting as a big "screen").

Safety: do not look directly at the sun.  See here for further safety information.
This is the best site I have found which shows when the eclipse is happening around the world and how much of an eclipse (how partial) it will be.



Here’s another link to solar eclipses on the BBC – looks like it is at 4:40???Conflicting information.



Here’s another animation.

We made some pinhole cameras.  Here is a copy of the instructions we used and some pictures of the cameras we made.  Unfortunately the images were not very clear, but the cameras WERE home made!

Where is Mississauga?

All About Mississauga

Follow this link to go to a webpage by a school in Mississauga...a town in Canada.

Go here to find out where it is.

There are lots of interesting facts about the town.

Please comment on their blog if you can.

Light and Shadows

Here are some questions we are going to investigate today:

What do you need to make a shadow?
Punn: You need a light source and an object
How do you make a shadow bigger?
Seb:you move the object closer to the light source.
How do you make a shadow smaller?
How do you make a shadow change shape?
How do you make a shadow more blurry?

Can light travel around corners?
Samuel:No but if you use a mirror and a light source, you can make a reflection of the light move around a corner.
Can you make coloured shadows?

Student Council Applicants

Well done to Guilli, Richie, Anika, Melyssa, Seb, Poon and Tom ...let me know who you are and I will change this post...who took an application form to be a student council rep for 3W. Don't forget to carefully fill them in and be ready to talk about them in class on Monday 18th.

Lines of Symmetry

Have a look at this lesson on lines of symmetry.


There are lots of different pictures which help you. The narrator's voice is really helpful too.

This link has a symmetry worksheet you can use to practice and this site has many different resources you can use. 

Don't forget to try using a mirror at home to see if shapes have lines of symmetry.

Art Attack

We saw how to make a Tutankhardboard mask in literacy last week, which was full of imoerative verbs (bossy verbs).

Here is the Art Attack site which has loads of fun activities. I'm going to tey the marble run painting!

Colins coffee - simulations

In ICT today we made coffee for Colin but didn't have to do any washing up.  We didn't even lift up a spoon.

Look here to have a go.

DT Photo frames

We will be making picture frames as part of our DT curriculum.  We will be designing after looking at a selection of frames.  Children will need to bring in a photo.  Here is a copy of the message which children have written into their Red Contact Books.

Remember to bring a photo into school. It should be the one you want to put into your frame.

If possible they should also try to bring in a small photo frame which you have at home, but make sure it is not too valuable or delicate.  (Well done to Annabel for bringing in the first one!)

Where does light come from and what makes it change direction? Sources and reflection

Miss Kem and 3W scientists took some great photos today.

How many light sources can you see?

Which is the most reflective surface?

Can you recognise any of the places from our school?

Your very own shop

Thanks to Miss Louise for her technological wizardry, here is a money maths game which you can play
RIGHT HERE
and
RIGHT NOW!

How do we see things? Where does light come from?

Have a look at this link to find out where light comes from and how the rays of light travel.

Subtraction facts

Here's the great game we used in class today to speed up our recall of maths number facts.  Click on this link to play the 60 second subtraction version.  If you want to try other games with more time, click here.


These games are all from Woodlands Junior School.  What an incredible collection of resources!


Here's the maths index page.

Do you want to change the way things are at school?

Read on to find out more about how to become one of the next student council members for year 3

Here are some details from Miss Caswell:

Once elected the children have a clearly defined role.  They are expected to:-

• Talk to other children to find out what they think
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Listen carefully to others
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Represent the views of the class not themselves
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Attend regular meetings
  
  
  
  
  
• Keep and read minutes from meetings
  
  
  
  
  
• To report back to their classmates
  
  

The representatives are uged to talk to the children in their class to find out ideas.  They bring their findings to council meetings but are urged to be realistic and always remember to be polite.  The Council is not a ‘complaints committee.’  It is intended as a forum where children can help think of ways to improve Year 3.

We have been very impressed with the suggestions made by the children. For example, the Council requested that special steps be made to go with our outside water fountains as some of our ‘vertically challenged’ children were finding it difficult to drink.  Children have monitored our Adventure playground and have spotted potential repairs and reported them enabling us to fix them before they become a major and more expensive need.  The children are very vigilant and lets us know very quickly when they spot something.

See me for an application form, which needs to be handed in by the end of Monday 11th January or click here.


Elections will take place next week.

Instructions - describe my shape

Today we sat back to back and gave instructions how to make small models from cubes.

We used bossy verbs (imperatives) to start sentences and we had to use lots of detailed language to make the model look like the picture.

Here are some of the pictures of what we managed to do:

In this last picture the models are very nearly the same.  Can you spot the difference?  Please post as a comment.

We also noticed that it is really helpful if you have a what you need  section of your instructions.

Fractions

Here's the fractions website which we used in class today.
Have a go at writing the correct number on the top (the numerator) and the correct number on the bottom (the denominator).

Happy New Year

What have you all been up to?   Hope you all had a great rest and are ready for Term 2 and the residentials.

I spent a few lovely relaxing days on Koh Chang.
Please write your Holiday who, what, where, when, why, which, how facts in the comments section.

Mr Ben