Friday Thoughts - Mountains

We have been focusing on a new topic at work this week and I have been loving it! I love adding some new topics each year, to keep variety and interest. This year, I added a unit on learning about Japan. I haven't been privileged to visit this country, but I have enjoyed researching about it. This week we focused on the land, the flag, the difference in language and traditional clothing. It has been fascinating!

Japan has quite a mountainous landscape, partially due to volcanic activity. There are many photos taken of Japan's highest, Mount Fuji, showcasing its height, complete with snow on top. This week the children completed a crafty/Maths activity making a picture of 'mountains'.

How to make it:

• Firstly, each child had a 'mountain' coloured square of paper. We used dark green, light green and brown.
• The children then folded their square in half and cut along the fold line to make two triangles.
• The children kept one of these triangles aside in order to make their tallest mountain.
• They then folded the other triangle in half and cut it to make two smaller triangles.
• I gave the children the option of keeping both of their small triangles or swap with other children in order to have different coloured mountains. In the picture above, this child had one big, light, green triangle, but then swapped their little, light, green triangles in order to obtain one little, brown triangle and one little, dark green triangle.
• The children then arranged their triangles, biggest one at the back, two smaller ones at the front, on a large, white piece of paper and then glued them down.
• The children glued on cotton wool at the top of their triangles to represent snow.
• You could add more decorations if you wish.

We chatted about how the square could make triangles and how the big triangle could make smaller triangles, therefore, this activity incorporated some mathematical concepts about Shape.

Have a lovely weekend :)