Our topic this morning was circles. How many circles can you find and identify? Followed by Pizza making with basic fractions and finally we set up a small world based around a circle.
Circle Hunt
We searched for circles and found many items that had a circle shape. We placed all the items we found in our circular Shape Drive Around, which was placed in our circular metallic tray.
Buttons, tomatoes, apples, jewels, coins, a tea cup and saucer, a wheel, a ball, a pocket watch a candle…so many circles to identify.
We even played a game of ‘What’s missing!’ The children got 2 minutes to look at all the items on the tray. I then removed 1 item and they had to identify which item was missing! What a great game!
Making Pizza and Basic Fractions
A recent trip to Ikea saw the usual impulse buys (!), but this Pizza was a great call! It fits perfectly into our Learn Well circular Shape Drive Around. We made our pizza using the four quarters, added the four pieces of tomato sauce, four pieces of cheese and then circular slices of onion, tomato, pepperoni and pineapple.
Discussing the four quarters, and that four quarters make one whole pizza. Two quarters make half a pizza. Showing how to write quarter and half as a fraction.
You could make this more complex for older children by discussing what would happen if you were to cut each of the quarters into two. Drawings of pizzas may help here. Adding fractions and taking away.
Mum made a pineapple pizza and cut it into quarters – Oliver had two quarters of pizza and Dylan had one quarter. How many quarters were left for Mum?
We used some real cherry tomatoes to slice. Discussing the whole tomato, then what happens if we cut it in two? We get two halves. What do two halves make? One whole one. We then cut the halves in half again to make four quarters. What do four quarters make? One whole one. We used Chalk Houses to write the fractions onto.
Small world circle play
Finally, we set up a small world, all in a metallic circular tray!
We included a circular wooden shape drive around with cars, a circular shaped wooden train track with motorised train – that steamed around in circles, a castle with circular turrets, trees, flowers, little mice, mountains, and a camp fire with a circular battery operated tea light.
Lottie Makes 