Problem Schmoblems :)

 We are excellent problem solvers in Te Mahuri. No problem is too big or too small! Today we were given two tasks around pentagons.

For our first task we had to identify the vertices in this regular pentagon.   

                                                      

Next we had to join each vertex of the pentagon to the two vertices opposite. Of course we used rulers for this.

Lastly we had to count up how many triangles we saw. We all rushed back to our teachers with the number 10 and we were surprised (and a little confused) that 10 wasn't the answer. They encouraged us to look closely and search for the bigger triangles not just the small ones. Just like that the excitement continued. For any of you giving this a go, we won't spoil it by telling you the answer.

.   

The second task involved us learning about the concept of tessellation. Once we understood this we investigated whether the regular pentagon would tessellate on its own or if it needed another shape. 

Did you know that soccer balls also use tessellation with pentagons and hexagons?

It's Shopping Time!

Being able to understand our money, the different types, how to add it and to know how much change to give or to receive, is a valuable life skill that Te Mahuri students have been learning about in Maths over the past two weeks.  The children were able to earn money for all the different activities they did as well as HERO cards they were given for showing their YMS HERO qualities. These are some of the many things we were asking them to do:




At the end of each day, the amount of money they had earnt was added up and as the week progressed the children were excited to see and work out their earnings. Now I can hear you asking, what were they going to be able to spend their earnings on, and the answer to that is in our very own Te Mahuri shop. We asked our whanau for help with old toys, books or baking so that the children had a variety of items to spend their earnings on  and our whanau were extremely generous and we cannot thank them enough. Check out our awesome shop!



So as you can see, our children were spoilt for choice and were absolutely overjoyed and super excited when it came time to spend their money that they had earnt. Some children spent a long time considering what to buy, others were straight on in there spending quickly. Some children spent all their earnings on themselves, others bought things for others. Some spent all their earnings and others have kept some of their earnings and intend to spend it on some free time next week. No matter what though, they all enjoyed themselves and learnt a lot too!

It's great being back :)

I know it will come as no surprise that we are happy to be back at school. Our class have quickly adapted to the changes we made to our classroom and daily routine and have been absolute YMS HEROes.

We have had a number of children still working from home and we have been able to use Google Meet so that they are part of the work, instructions and messages that we give even though they are not physically in the class with us.

We have a new shared book and as you can see from our class website we had a choice of what that book would be. When all the votes had been counted, we chose The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo. So far we have laughed, we have compared lives and then today we were upset at what had happened We are loving our choice of book. You too can hear the story as we read it aloud on our class website under shared story.

In Maths Mrs Taylor's teams combined Maths and Art on Friday and we looked at M.C Escher's work. This was building on our 'Learning from Home' work that we were doing while we were on lockdown.  During lockdown we looked at Paul Klee and Mondrian. Escher uses tessellation to create his pieces.We have really enjoyed creating our own masterpiece inspired by M.C Escher's work.  Check out our work. We are not finished yet but you can see the effect of our town terrific tessellations.

Well we hope you have all enjoyed being back at school. What did you miss most about school?