Monday, November 27, 2006

Christmas gifts
A glossy magazine fell out of the morning paper today... 'The Complete Christmas Catalogue' full of goodies to buy.

On the page 'keep the kids happy'... between the robot and the nintendo was a picture of a stick!
and the following

What: A stick
Where: Beaches, forests, river banks, some backyards and farms
Price: $0
Why it's fun: Can be used for hitting balls, teasing dogs, tracing patterns in sand, an aid for pirate adventures, pushing into cow pats and chasing younger siblings and parents with.

How refreshing

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Activities for Year 5 & 6 students

The BP Challenge website provides problem solving activities for groups of students. These are fabulous for Senior Discovery Time.

Just print the page of instuctions from the website and you are ready to go.

Last week we challenged the kids to make 'The Longest Bridge' (out of newspaper!)

The task
To build a model bridge which must sit on the back of two chairs facing outwards. The bridge must be as long as possible but strong enough to support a 500g weight.

Materials
15 full sheets of newspaper
2m sellotape
3m string
2 sheet A4 card
Scissors (for construction only)

It goes on to give conditions and judging criteria

Ready made activities just waiting to be used. Try them out they are great.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Equipment

Just a few ideas for looking after equipment

Strengthen all the corners of boxes (jigsaws, games, construction sets) with clear heavy duty tape so that the boxes are more robust.

Use Discovery Time to teach students how to look after things. Insist that when lids are removed they are placed under the box for safe keeping and that pieces are not spread all over the room.

Keep large pieces of fabric (1-2 metres is good) for the students to spread out on the floor when using construction material (LEGO etc). This defines the area and keeps all the pieces together. When packing up it is easy to gather up the corners and collect all the bits at once.