For anyone wondering why on earth the students of 5Co were busily rolling out toilet paper (freshly bought!) in the playground, they were creating a scale model of the solar system as part of their IPC unit, ‘Mission to Mars’.

The children were representing the distances between each planet and the sun using long lengths of toilet paper. As well developing their scientific knowledge and understanding, the children had to practice lots of maths skills.

The planets’ distances were calculated by NASA in millions of miles so the boys and girls first converted these to kilometres, using their calculators skills. Then they got down to the business of Place Value, rounding these millions of kilometres off to the nearest thousand.

The information about the lengths of toilet paper needed was provided by NASA in decimal numbers, which had to be rounded up or down to the nearest sheet. Mrs Collins can confirm that 12 exhausted astronauts trooped back to basecamp after that mission! Take a look at their work…