Growing Patterns

We've been making "growing patterns" in Year 4.

Here are some of the patterns that we've created.
We wrote labels to show the step numbers ("Just write N if you don't won't to write 'Number' every time.")

Here are a few of us explaining our pattern:

We're working out what the Cuisenaire rods in each step would add up to.

Some of us graphed our numbers on Desmos.
Usually they lined up in a straight line, like this:


But there was also this curve too:

Cats disappearing

After reading about the Vanishings in Varjak Paw, we're preparing to write our own news reports about disappearing cats.

We've been reading lost cat news reports and getting to know one in particular from Port William in Scotland. We've story-mapped this report and begun to learn it by heart, to get the feel of how such a report goes.

Port William Scotland

But we needed to actually send a couple of our reporters to Port William to get the real experience:

Galileo and the Pendulum

When Galileo was in church in Pisa he started watching the light hanging from the ceiling. It was swinging.

He was interested in how it was moving. Sometimes the wind would blow and it would swing more, then gradually it would slow down.

So he began experimenting with pendulums. He tried changing the size of the swing, the weight at the end of the string and the length of the string, and each time measured how long the swing took.

We used a timer to time ten swings of a pendulum.

We tried it with a big swing and with a little swing and found that the time the swings took was almost the same.

Galileo found the same thing and used the sameness of the pendulum swing to design a clock that would keep steady time: a pendulum clock. This was the beginning of pendulum clocks:

How the pendulum gives the tick tock of the clock

Galileo's design

The design built

Here it is, made out of cardboard by J. E. Johnson:

Pendulum clocks meant that people could measure time accurately at last. Before they could measure to the hour, now they could measure to the minute, the second even. Galileo's discovery changed the world.

How to cook a "Tortilla de patatas" (Potatoes's omelette)

This weekend I have helped to my mum to prepare "Tortilla de patatas". It's one of my favourites meals!!!
I will explain how to cook. Do you want to do it?


1. To prepare the potatoes

2. To prepare the eggs while we cook the potatoes with olive oil.

3. Mix beaten eggs with potatoes and salt.

4. Simmer until this result:

5. Ready to eat!!!!!!

The Monster

In the novel Varjak Paw, by SF Said and Dave McKean, Varjak needs to find a dog, which he has heard is big, like a monster. Only problem is, when he sees cars, he assumes those are dogs. We wrote poems about what these dogs seemed like to him:

Some of us made slideshows of our poems:

Howard Carter

Howard Cater made the great discovery of the boy Pharaoh, Tutankhamun. Howard Carter (9 May 1874 – 2 March 1939) was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist who became world famous after discovering the intact tomb of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun (colloquially known as "King Tut" and "the boy king") in November 1922.
In 1907, after three hard years for Carter, Lord Carnarvon employed him to supervise Carnarvon's Egyptian excavations in the Valley of the Kings.^[6] The intention of Gaston Maspero, who introduced the two, was to ensure that Howard Carter imposed modern archaeological methods and systems of recording.^[7][8]

KV62 in the Valley of the Kings

Carnarvon financed Carter's work in the Valley of the Kings to 1914, but until 1917 excavations and study were interrupted by the First World War. Following the end of the First World War, Carter aggressively resumed his work.
After several years of finding little, Lord Carnarvon became dissatisfied with the lack of results, and in 1922 informed Carter that he had one more season of funding to search the Valley of the Kings and find the tomb.^[9]
On 4 November 1922, Howard Carter's excavation group found steps that Carter hoped led to Tutankhamun's tomb (subsequently designated KV62) (the tomb that would be considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings).Here is the famous Howard Carter.

Counting to one hundred on the abacus

Here's Beatriz and Maria showing how to count to one hundred on the abacus:

What great abacus-counting!  There were a few slips, but you can see they've really worked it out!
 Maria has really joined in with everything since she joined us at the start of the time, and Beatriz has been great at making sure she understands the English, with Spanish translation when necessary!

The Monster

The Monster

Which Script?

There are six numbers written in five different scripts.

We had to sort out which was which.

We got into our 'thinking threes' and did a lot of talking to work it out. At first it seemed really hard, but then bit by bit it started to become clear...

Thanks to nrich and SMILE for this great lesson!