We are back in first class after a wonderful midterm, we hope everyone enjoyed a well-deserved break! We were kept busy in the weeks leading up to our week off with lots of Halloween activities and new topics to learn about.

One of our favourite weeks last month was ‘Maths Week’! Throughout the week, we focused on problem solving and using our maths eyes. Every day, we would use our problem solving skills to solve some tricky maths riddles. For example: Stephen, Liam, Carla and Sadhbh meet up. Each person shakes hands with every other person once. How many handshakes are there in total? As well as solving riddles, our class became mindful of all the wonderful mathematical shapes, lines and problems hidden around us in our everyday lives. We used pictures of lots of everyday items to create and solve mathematical problems, for example: Can you estimate how many smarties are on these gingerbread men? Some people in the class even used their maths eyes at home, and brought in pictures that we stuck on our maths wall!

Throughout October, we also focused on learning a little bit more about where Halloween comes from. We discovered that Halloween actually originated in Ireland and comes from a festival called Samhain, which was celebrated by the Celts. As some of the children in the class would be in different countries for the Halloween break, we decided to learn a bit about Halloween traditions around the world. We looked at different ways the festival is celebrated in China, Belgium, Canada, England, Spain and Mexico. Did you know that in Hong Kong, Halloween is known as the ‘Festival of Hungry Ghosts? Some people even burn pictures of money or fruit on this day, as they believe the images may reach the spirit world and bring comfort to the ghosts!

In art, we wanted to put our knowledge of Autumn to good use. We created these autumn scenes, using paint and cotton balls. We made sure to include all the usual colours we see in Autumn, and even added some falling leaves!