Check out these home/school link sheets for parents using Busy at Maths!
We have worked through each topic page from page 1 look back to 5th class, up to Fractions on page 9 between 31st August and the October mid term break, with division on page 7 to be covered when we come back in November. It will be a huge benefit to you and your child to read over the relevant sheet on a Sunday or Monday evening so you will be well prepared with ideas and activities to support your child’s maths learning during the week.
October 2017: Metamorphosis
We received a special delivery of caterpillars on the 4th of September. We watched them grow, molt three times, spin silk, hang in a ‘j’ shape and slowly turn into jewel-like chrysalides. Early in October we witnessed the miracle of metamorphosis as the butterflies began to emerge live during class. We released the butterflies and made a film to capture this moment.
We entered this film into the REEL life science competition.
We got 20 caterpillars and thanks to the care they received in our class rooms, we had 100% survival rate, as 20 butterflies were released. An adult female Painted Lady Butterfly can lay up to 500 eggs, so there could be up to 10,000 eggs hatching around the school where we released them. Unfortunately the survival rate in the wild is much less than that in the classroom, with only about 8 surviving for every 400 eggs laid. They migrate to Morocco for the winter as it is too cold for them here in Ireland.
Some more photos showing the different stages of our project.
September 2017: The Hunt Museum
On 29th September, with beat the street fobs in hand, we walked into the Hunt Museum. The museum has a collection of over 2,500 artefacts from home and abroad and is an 18th century Georgian building itself. It is an unusual Georgian building in that it is limestone as opposed to the usual red brick. We were there to see the exhibition of John B. Yeats and Paul Henry who are the two most important 20th century Irish painters and we really enjoyed looking at their paintings. We also got to see and interact with some artefacts which was fun. We had lunch in the park on the way back to school.
Link to 6th Class Ms. Garvey’s winning entry in the Sherkin Island Competition 2017.
