Why did the Jedi cross the road..? To prove he wasn't odd...

Today we did a bit of focus on numbers, specifically looking at what makes them odd and even numbers.

The easiest way I found to explain it was play a little game involving Star Wars mini figs.  All the characters have to cross the road from their houses to Mos Eilsey spaceport, the only rule is they must go in pairs - after all you must always hold someone's hand when you cross the road.

If there is a character left behind then it's an odd number, if everyone gets across the road it's even.

We plotted our findings on a number chart, colouring evens in green and odds in red.  Then we were about to see the pattern that shows all odd numbers end in 1,3.5,7,9 and all even in 2,4,6,8,0.

By following this simple rule we were able to look at all numbers, including some very silly long ones like 312,865,685,002 and instantly see whether it was odd/even, just by looking at the last digit.

In other non Star Wars related news...

**Warning, this post contains no activities related to Star Wars !!  It really doesn't !! **

Following on from our 'How to draw a scarecrow' activity earlier in the week, and as part of our Autumn project, today we made our own scarecrow.

I was told that we weren't allowed to make him too scary though, in case he scared the chickens :)

This is a great free activity and also loads of fun.  We used; some sticks we picked up on a walk in the woods, an old t shirt that no longer fits, an old pillowcase and some straw - borrowed from the chickens (fresh stuff obviously!).

The sticks were tied together to make a cross, the pillowcase was given a face and then stuffed. then that along with the t shirt attached over the top of the sticks.

We found it easier to stuff the t shirt after we had put it on and tied the bottom, but the head was a lot easy to fill first and then attach.

This is how he turned out:

This was definitely an outside activity, we ended up with straw everywhere!  Including in our hair and all over the garden...  In case you are wondering why he's in a flower pot, well the ground was too dry to 'plant' him and also I suspect he's not very weather proof, so has to be brought inside when the weather changes... currently he's in the conservatory...

Tatooine....

Today we had time to finish our Tatooine model.  Here's our planning and storyboard.

Being a hot desert planet, we of course had to base this on real sand!  We used food containers as buildings and the backdrop (our version of Mos Eisley Spaceport) was made using sponge painting. The buildings are also sponge painted, but I covered them in white tape first so that the paint would stick better.

The figures are all downloads from the internet - I resized them all - this time a bit more realistically :) Some of them I managed to find colouring in versions of, was even better. They're laminated, partly because I love laminating stuff (yes really), but mostly because it helps them to stand up.  The figures are literally just pushed into the sand.

I know we have the Millenium Falcon taking off without it's crew, but it just looks so cool flying off the page that we had to do it.

This was a relatively straightforward 'build', next up is Dagobah - a swampy planet... I suspect won't be quite so easy!  A good opportunity to talk about yet another different type of habitat though.

We've been looking in more detail this week at types of planets/habitats, pairing up key words like 'hot' 'rocky' 'gas giants' etc... and talking about what we know about each one. So far we've done 12 and I've been handed a list for the next four :)

Can you ever have enough Star Wars...?

Today we did:

• Star Wars maths
• Star Wars writing
• Star Wars 'pairs' game
• Star Wars Alphabet
• Star Wars, counting in tens
• Star Wars - what do we know about the planets (looking at types of planets/climates etc)
• Worked on our Star Wars Tatooine model
• and a Star Wars game

I though we should have a little break from Star Wars and decided we could learn to draw scarecrows for our Autumn project - great instructions from here: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/learn-to-draw-a-scarecrow-1

Here's what we did:

You'll notice the lightsaber pitchforks that have been added to someone's scarecrow - it seems you really can't get enough of Star Wars....

What do you do when you run out of shelf space....?

So far we've made Mustafar, Hoth and Endor and half way through Tatooine... The house in starting to run out of shelf space !!

We've come up with a small compromise... not wanting to undo all of the amazing work that has gone into the models, we have condensed them into mini planets.

I found some amazing boxes that were almost build for purpose in Ikea at the weekend, and the best bit is they are stackable!  We've taken a few of the elements from the larger displays, for Endor it was a couple of the Ewoks, one plant and few of the fallen trees (aka twig bits), and I think they look pretty cute.

We just need to re-build mini Mustafar as it got pretty much wiped out in the volcano eruptions :)

The Alphabet - our summer project

This little project has been one of my favourites - although I find myself saying that a lot these days so you'll have to forgive me :)

Our mission - to find the alphabet!  Everywhere we went this summer we were on the lookout for letters, which we then took photos of and printed out until we had the whole board covered.

I managed to get a cheap alphabet picture from the 99p shop and we used this as a template.

Great fun watching this build up and a useful exercise in letter placement, as well observation skills - for me too!

Today we finally completed the last few letters and it looks a little something like this

I made a soft copy of all the letter too and made them into a nice printout for him to put on our noticeboard.  I am loving how this looks.



And just in case we need a bit of Star Wars, I have this as a surprise for him too - check out the Star Wars Alphabet:

I looked to find the source website for this and it appears to be broken, so I'm hoping that the pinterest link will work instead: http://pinterest.com/pin/494340496568929258

The Forest Moon of Endor....

I was looking forward to this one... Forests mean trees and plants, which means again we get to experiment with using different materials for making the model.

But first the planning stage:

I love this bit... although it means I have to try and think of how all his excellent ideas can be translated in to something he can make without too much help!

In trying to get as natural a feel as possible we decided to take a trip to the local nursery to pick some plants - I was told very firmly that we had to avoid plants with flowers, as there are no flowers on Endor.   We also made a trip to some nice wooded areas to collect bark, moss and some twigs and we even managed to salvage some nice chunky bit of branch from his Grandad's garden that make excellent tree stumps.  This is how that all looked together:

(yes that's another cat litter tray)

Alpines worked really well, there's one that looks just like a miniature tree - please don't ask me what it's called I'm rubbish with plants!  There are a few herbs here too, like dill and thyme which are very leafy and make great foliage.

Time for my homework.... I was given a list of images to find and print off the internet - thank goodness for Google!  We then stuck them to card for extra strength, cut them out and then laminated them to make them a bit more resilient.

 

So I admit that my scaling for the images was a bit off :)  But I think overall it's not a bad job.
We used lolly sticks to stand the images up, with a bit of blue tack for extra support.

Again I don't think the photos do it justice, plus I'm tempted to make some sort of backdrop for this, maybe using sponge painting.  A great little project this one, where we got to look at different textures, a bit of wildlife and use some creativity. 

Next up: Tatooine