February 2025 Archives

As part of our exciting Festival of Maths week at Penpol School, our Year 2 pupils got moving in maths with an activity called Active Arrays! Combining the physical skills of coordination, agility and teamwork with their enthusiasm for multiplication, the children worked together to create large-scale arrays using cones on the school playground.

Pupils explored the concept of multiplication in a hands-on way, arranging cones into rows and columns to help visualise the number patterns of arrays. This interactive approach helped them grasp this key mathematical concept while staying physically active and socially engaged.

It was fantastic to see their enthusiasm and energy in action—learning really comes to life when we move! Hooray for Arrays!

Class 4 had a smashing time today in our science lesson! First, the children eagerly revealed what was hidden inside the balloons. Many enthusiastic helpers volunteered to remove the balloons from the freezing ice.

We began by using our skills to record predictions. Carefully, we worked as a team to set up three controlled methods to figure out which would be the best way to free the dinosaurs from the ice quickly. Each method was timed to find out the results.

Then came the frenzy of smashing the capsules over and over again to free the dinosaurs (don’t worry, no dinosaurs were harmed in the process! 😊).

After all the fun, it was time to record our results. In third place, after 19 minutes and 42 seconds, we decided the ice egg near the heater was no longer in the running. The hot water method impressed us with a time of 9 minutes and 21 seconds, with one child noting, “…the water is now cold because the ice has melted, making it go from hot water to cold water.” But, in first place, with a super speedy time of 1 minute and 56 seconds, was the smashing, crashing, and bashing of the ice capsules!

What a frosty, fun-filled lesson it was!