Welcome back to Year Four’s Weekly Blog.  As always, we begin by telling you what a busy, busy week we’ve had.  No, really!

In Maths, we have been looking at the area and perimeter of shapes.  The area is the space inside a shape, and the perimeter is the outline of the shape.

So, here’s our example.  Have you heard that Mr Price has been busy doing some DIY on his home?  You haven’t?  Really?  You must be about the only ones…He’s driven us potty…going on, and on…and on…and on…

Anyway, take a look at this picture.

So, for Mr P to complete his kitchen he needs to buy flooring to cover the yellow part -the `area’.  This is measured in metres squared.  Then, he must buy skirting board that will go around the edge of the room -the blue line -which is the perimeter.  How do you think he might work these out?

Well, our Year 4 objective for area, is to find the area of a shape by counting squares.  So if we were to draw squares all over the kitchen...Mr P would be really cross.  If you imagine 7 squares on each row, and 3 rows down.  Count up the squares, it would give you 21m squared.  This is easier, if you multiply the length 7m by the width 3m.  7 x 3 =21m.  

To find the perimeter, you would measure the length, the width and add.  So, a length is 7m, width is 3m, then another length of 7m and another width of 3m.  So, 7 + 3 + 7 + 3 =20m.  Or, 7 + 3 x 2 =20m.

Cool, eh?

Please note  -Mr P's kitchen really isn't this big...only in his dreams.

Check out this online activity here

In English we have been looking at a book called -Dragonory.  It is a collection of stories based around traditional tales.  The one we looked at first was a story called `Dragonory'.  It was about a dragon -the last dragon -that built a bridge and charged people money to cross.  One day however, a boy named Toki came to the bridge, and the dragon met his match.