Race to Zero!!

Yesterday we learnt about addition, which is part of maths, you add numbers together with a plus sign (+) and the numbers get bigger. That's why they call it adding UP! Today we learnt all about subtraction (-) or take away (not the kind you eat). When you take away numbers they get smaller.

We played race to zero. To play race to zero you need two counters, one for each player (we used buttons) one six-sided die and a number line that goes from zero to twenty. Both players start with their counters on twenty, the first player rolls the die and they work out in their head, what nnumber they will get if they take that number away from twenty. Then they bounce their counter back to that number. The next player has their go and does the same. The winner is the first person to zero. When you get close to zero you need to roll the exact number to go back to zero. If you're on one, you must roll a one to win.

My strategy I used to work out the number I got was counting in my head in twos, if it was even. Lola

I liked how Allister was a good sport, even though he beat me two times. Charlotte

I liked having a guess and predicing what it would land on. I got it right! Tahlia

I liked playing it, I played with Rhiannon and I won. You got mixed up counting back but then I got it right. Lizzie

I enjoyed the game and I won three times! Dean

I liked race to zero, I liked winning too. Allister

It was very fun. I won two times. Clarrie

I played with Vasco and we both won it. Leila

I leant you can use rainbow numbers for taking away from twenty. Jamil

I counted a little bit and I guess what I would land on. I was right most of the time. Hamza

I tried to think what their counter is going to land on. Jordie

I enjoyed the game alot, it helped me to subtract! Tegan

Have a Marvellous Mother's Day!

We here in 1/2 K would just like to say..... Happy Mothers' Day! Mums are great and so we put together a great present for our mums. Because we like science we decided to make some cool magical opening paper flowers. When you float them in water, the folded petals open like a beautiful star. This is because the fibers in the paper swell up with water and straighten out all by themselves.... they look beautiful! We put our paper flowers inside a card for our mums. We had to write instructions, so our mums knew what to do with the flowers and we also wrote a message to tell our mums how much we love them.

 Before we wrote our instructions we brainstormed a list of other words for magical and other words for flowers. We chose our favourite words for our headings. When we had finished the inside of our cards we stamped them with roses, pink, yellow and red, using..... celery ends! As our cards were drying we cut and folded and decorated our own envelopes, then we put it all together and popped them into our bags, ready for Mothers' Day!!
 

 

 

You can find the printable for the flowers and more info on why they work here at the surfing scientist:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/surfingscientist/magic.flower.htm

Playing Patience

Today we played patience. It is a complicated game but lots of fun. It's a card game and its other name is solitaire. Patience means you have to wait for a long time and stay calm and quiet – the game is called patience because it can take a while. It’s called solitaire because you can play it with just one person but you can play it with more people too. We learnt to play it as whole class, sitting in a big circle while Lauren dealt out a pack of giant playing cards. We got to play ourselves with special packs of cards, like Nemo cards which was cool!

Here are our thoughts and advice on playing patience:

 You lay out the cards so it looks like half a pyramid. Evie

You put all the aces up at the top of the rows of cards. Clarrie

You put the cards onto each other, they go downwards. If you have a ten you put a nine on it. Jamil


You can only pick up three cards from the turn over pile at once. You have to put a red five on a black six. Goldie

If you have a space you can put your king in it. Mitchell

Once you've used all the turn over cards, you go through them again in groups of three. Lola

You only count downards, unless you're putting cards on the ace pile. Alisha

You can't shuffle the turn over pile once you've started. Otherwise it's cheating. You have to be patient. Amelia

If you cheat to get it out, you feel a bit sad. Last night I played two games of solitaire and I lost. Aimee

I learnt that it takes patience! Dan

If you do all of that, you might win! Aidan

It's a hard game because you nearly almost always lose. Not many people have won it. Romy

It's a good game, I'm going to try a bit more. Jordie

It's a hard game. We played it with big cards. Dean

Leave the jokers out and if you mix the cards up you're not playing a proper game of patience. Lewis

I really like playing patience. Audrey

It's a really good game if you're on a holiday and you're bored with nothing to do and you can't go outside. Lola