Making cakes is easy peasy using an egg as our weight!

Today I introduced the children how to make cakes using an egg as the weight. 

It doesn't matter what order you add your ingredients except that you have to leave the egg until the very end for obvious reasons!!

So, the first important thing the children need to know is what 'balanced' means. We want both pans on the balance to be the same. The children show me that they understand by showing how their hands are balanced.

Weigh the sugar...is it balanced?

Then the flour.... Sifted or not it still works (although we talked about what sifting flour does!)

Then the butter....

And then the egg!

Mix all the ingredients together and then put the mixture in your paper cases and bake for about 12 minutes.

Leave to cool and the ice them.

Some children went into making cakes all by themselves! Honestly they really did!

And so , proof of the pudding is that 4/5 year olds can make cakes independently!

Invest in some balances and try it at home. It really works. I love it!!

Happy puzzle maths afternoon

On Friday we had the Happy puzzle maths company visit school. They brought with them some fun games and puzzles for us to play.

We had to work together to put the puzzle pieces together to make a picture. This was trickier than it sounds as there were pictures on both sides and the pieces were funny shapes! 

We were then given a bag of penguins and asked to count out 10. This was interesting to watch as many children counted out 10 each! In the end they did work together and then had the challenge of balancing these on the icebergs. Very tricky!! This involved patience and taking turns and all children rose to the challenge!

Autumn walk

Today we talked about the seasons and found out about what happens during autumn. We then went on an autumn walk around the school grounds. What beautiful colours we saw! The children loved exploring what we find during autumn and were keen to collect leaves, conkers, berries and apples....and jump on mole hills!! We took time to listen to the sounds around us and realised that we had to be quiet if we were to hear anything! 

Erin spots some berries and shows them to India.

The children were surprised at how few leaves some trees had.

The children loved showing us the lovely things they found.

Lovely leaves....

And conkers.....

Berries....

And apples....

And more leaves!!

We enjoyed visiting The nest, our new outdoor learning space, and we sat on the tree stumps and enjoyed the beauty of autumn using a range of senses.

The end of a very busy half term.....

This week has been delight in watching the children use and apply the new skills they have learnt.

In phonics we have spent our week using the sounds we have learnt so far by blending these to read simple words. We especially enjoyed our funny phonics pirate game in doing so.

Funky fingers is an exciting part of everyday life in Cherry class now and the children really are developing those fine motor skills through a range of fun activities. Here are some.

Dough gym is a favourite weekly activity.

Putting chocolate cubes into the chocolate box using tweezers only!

Using 'Pog' cards and a dice to turn over a matching number of cards, one at a time.

Adding coloured Cheerios onto the octopus body one at a time.

Lacing dinosaurs...

The children have also had fun exploring our new exciting adventure playground activities, although we did have a couple of children who didn't want to go on and opted for other play activities on the playground.

Have a lovely half term my little cherries........