There were little Mathematician’s hard at work in Ms. Melvin’s Junior Infants this week. Here is a little insight into what we got up to.
The boys and girls participated really well in their Maths stations this week. We have started working with Numicon shapes in school and are getting so good at recognising the shapes, counting the holes and matching the Numicon shape with the number. They are also really enjoying playing fun games to help with their learning. The Numicon puzzles were definitely a hit!
The children have been playing some really engaging Maths games with Ms. McMahon. This week, they played the Humpty Dumpty game where they tried filling Humpty’s wall with 10 counters. To do this they had to roll a dice, count out the correct amount of counters and keep going until they reached 10. They were great at their counting and problem-solving skills.
The boys and girls also engaged in the Apple Picking game. For this, they took it in turns to pick apples (counters) off a tree template. Whoever picked the last apple off the tree was the winner. The children showed great strategy during this game and figured out which pattern of turn-taking ensured that they would always be the winner.
We have been discussing the terms tall, short, big, small, wide and narrow in Maths this week. Therefore, for one of the stations, I challenged the children to build tall and short towers. Just look at some of their constructions!
We discussed how Maths Week is in October and realised that another special event also happens in October… Halloween! Therefore, we cut out some 2D shapes during our Art lesson and created some really scary pumpkin monsters! The classroom is starting to become very spooky indeed.
Finally, because we have been reading the Three Little Pigs, we decided to engage in special STEM project which relates to the story. Using cocktail sticks, blue-tack and plasticine, the children created strong houses. While building the houses, they considered which shapes they could form which would make the house more steady and which materials were better for sticking the cocktail sticks together (we quickly learned that the blue-tack was much better than the plasticine!). When their houses were ready, they tested their strength by getting the Big Bad Wolf (the hairdryer) to blow it down. I was so impressed by how strong their houses were- I think we have some future architects in our midst.
Well done to all of the Junior Infants for a very successful Maths week. We hope you enjoyed reading about it just as much as we enjoyed participating in it!
