Vin's Learning Journey

 We looked at videos about Sumatran rhinos. Then we solved some puzzles using clues to draw the perimeter of an enclosure for them. We played a game rolling 2 dice and multiplying them together then drawing a shape with the length perimeter. We also came up with some drawings of ponds using squared paper that had to have a specific perimeter. We used a scale of 1 square = 1 metre. Vinnie did some pages about verbs in his English book. We did the next mystery science lesson. We made two different cups of ‘lava’ and did experiments with them to see the differences between cone volcanoes and shield volcanoes and why cone volcanoes explode violently sometimes whereas people can stand and watch shield volcanoes erupting comparatively safely. We learned how sometimes volcanoes erupt so violently that they shoot clouds of ash hundreds of miles away. This gave us more clues about what happened in our overall mystery with the prehistoric rhino fossils. We watched a few other mini mystery vi...

 We practiced measuring in centimetres. We worked out a longest and shortest route for some narwhals through cracks in the ice. Vinnie practiced writing out some sentences changing from past to present tense and vice versa. We worked on the next mystery in our mystery science topic. We plotted the locations of volcanoes around the Pacific ring. We thought about if a volcano is likely to appear where we live. We looked at some extinct volcanoes and plotted them on our map from last week showing where the ash fall fossil beds were found. It didn’t look likely that a volcano could have killed the animals, even an extinct one. We looked at sauropods and practiced estimating their size by measuring fossil bones and multiplying by the scale. We learned about the saguaro cacti in the Sonoran desert. We watched a clip about their seeds and solved some puzzles about different distances that animals had taken the seeds from the main plant. Vinnie wrote a story starring his favourite Smash Br...

 We looked at some videos of donkeys at donkey sanctuaries and solved some money puzzles about possible coins that could have been given in change at the donkey gift shop. We played the fraction matching game. Vin’s pretty speedy at spotting fractions now. Vinnie practiced rewriting some sentences using the correct pronouns to replace repeated nouns. Vin showed good perseverance building a model pirate ship. We looked at different fossils and learned a bit about Mary Anning who discovered dinosaur fossils in Lyme Regis. We solved some money puzzles about numbers of fossils sold for different amounts of money. Vin chose another Scratch project to work on. He made a flappy bird type game with a flying hippo. Keeping with our tectonic plates theme, we started a new mystery science unit called ‘the birth of rocks’ . We learned about the Ashfall Fossil beds in Nebraska and thought about how fossils of prehistoric rhinos could have been found in the middle of North America. We made some ...

 We watched a video of some straw coloured fruit bats travelling to a mango forest in Zambia. We looked at the map and saw where the tropics were - where a lot of megabats live, and looked up where the Kasanka National park is. We compared our arm span to the great flying fox’s wing span. We solved some puzzles with fractions to work out how many mangoes different bats ate. Then we watched a clip of some baboons and elephants eating mangoes at a safari lodge. Vinnie made a puzzle up to solve with how many mangoes they ate. Vin had a go at proofreading an article, spotting various spelling and punctuation errors and correcting them. We watched the final tectonic plates video. This time about tsunamis. We saw how they were caused and thought about ways to protect from and prepare for them. We talked about some books we’d read recently. Then Vin rewrote the blurb to one of his books in his own words. We solved some more fraction puzzles working out how much of a leaf different caterpi...