Year 2 Maths

For the last few weeks, Year 2 have been practising their measuring skills. We have practised using rulers and metre sticks correctly, compared lengths and solved problems. We have also been practising using the vocabulary for height and length, working out which words would be the same for both and which ones would be used for only height or only length.

A baking challenge from Mrs Mahoney

This is for a message for all our Oakwood Primary children and families.

I love baking with my children, Sophie (9) and Edward (6)!
Edward and I would love you to try baking a carrot cake like we did. We have baked this recipe quite a few times as it always comes out well and we think it is delicious. My mum, who is an amazing cook, uses this recipe now and she has tried many carrot cake recipes over the years!






Baking is a great activity for all the family. As well as enjoyment, there are extra learning opportunities for children in the form of reading, writing, maths and science!

In addition to using the measuring scales to measure the ingredients, here are some of the maths questions I asked Edward as he was baking:
• How many grams are there in 1kg?
• 100g add 150g
• Double 250g
• What fraction of the 500g bag did we use?
• What is 4 tablespoons of butter in grams? 14.3g x 4?


Don’t worry of you do not have the exact ingredients. We used:
• All white self-raising flour as we didn’t have wholemeal.
• 1 tsp nutmeg and 1 tsp cinnamon instead of 2 tsp mixed spice (or you could leave out the spice)
• Golden caster sugar instead of icing sugar
We used an electric mixer to make the icing topping but you could also whisk it by hand.
The carrot cake also works well in a round cake tin!

We hope you enjoy the egg yolk in oil video – we thought it was very interesting!
Also, Edward usually says no to cracking the eggs but agreed to do it if I filmed him! He did really well!

Good luck with your baking! Have fun!

Physics Day at Oakwood

On Thursday 15th November, Oakwood pupils became physicists for a time. Each year group explored various aspects of physics with practical activities.

Mr Taylor performed 3 excellent experiments to demonstrate the effects of air pressure and how aeroplanes actually fly.

Year R explored the forces of gravity, magnetism and water; 
Year 1 explored floating and sinking; 
I had the pleasure of teaching Year 2 about gravity and friction. They made accurate predictions and talked about the results they observed with great understanding. They also grasped the concept of fair testing; Year 3 explored light including refraction and linking to understanding of materials by creating shadow puppets in 3CB:

"Light travels as a wave. When you put your shadow puppet in between the lamp and the wall, the puppet blocks some of the light waves.

The closer you put your shadow puppet to the lamp, the more light waves are blocked. This makes a bigger shadow. Moving the shadow puppet away from the lamp makes a smaller shadow as fewer light waves are blocked."

Year 5 investigated the effects of air resistance and friction with balloon cars.

Finally, Year 6 created periscopes to explore the law of reflection and combined a little chemistry with electronics. Potato battery anyone?

The children all loved getting stuck in to science today. We are looking forward to the next science day in the spring term, which will be biology based. 

Year 4 visit the River in Selbourne

Year 4 had a wonderful day today visiting the 'Gilbert White field study centre'. Their day consisited of two workshops (outside bbrrr). One was in and at the river, measuring, testing, checking and observing. The other in the woodland making a picture showing how a river is formed and works. What a wonderful day and a big thank you to Emily and Josh!

Measuring capacity in Year 1

In maths the children took part in many different activities to explore capacity.

This included practising their capacity vocabulary, estimating, measuring to find out the volume and filling containers with dry ingredients as well as water.