We all enjoyed our ‘No Pens Wednesday’ today which involved doing lots of talking and practical activities without picking up our pencil/pen.
After finding out about some of the traditional Indian foods, we were inspired to make our own vegetable curry from scratch. We worked collaboratively just like Team Ant to prepare the vegetables. We used the ‘claw’ and the ‘bridge’ cutting techniques to safely slice the onion and chop the potatoes and carrots. Even though some of us found this quite tricky, we didn’t give up or complain, just like Tough Tortoise.
The best bit, I’m sure most of us would agree, was sampling it. How delicious it was!
In Science this week, we found out about nocturnal animals and now know that these are animals that come out at night time while we are sleeping. We enjoyed drawing different nocturnal animals including: foxes, owls, badgers and bats…
Here are Dhilan’s fantastic detailed sketches…
We then thought about the question ‘Do we have nocturnal animals at ACE?’
After discussing how we could find out, we started to plan our investigation. Some of the children were quite keen to come to school in the middle of the night but we managed to come up with an alternative!
We decided to set up an investigation using a tube, some paint and some food. Hopefully on Monday we will find some footprints around the tubes we have hidden.
We are all fascinated to find out what, if any, animals visit our school grounds during the night. We will keep you posted!
What a fantastic, jam packed art day we have had! We all thoroughly enjoyed expressing our creativity by creating an amazing web after being inspired by the story ‘The Spider Weaver’.
After looking closely at some photos of different spiders’ webs and noticing the details inside, we used wax crayons to practise various techniques including: hatching and cross hatching. We then had a go at drawing curved and zig-zag lines.
After this, we were ready to draw our web using the wax crayons. We were just like Tough Tortoise and imitated the photographs.
We wanted to make our webs bright and beautiful so used different coloured wax crayons.
We then used the water colour paints to wash the background light green…
In the story, the boys discovered the fascinating spider’s web in a banana tree. As banana trees don’t grow in England, we couldn’t use these leaves but used other leaves to do some printing. First of all, we looked very carefully at the different shapes and patterns we could see. We then carefully sketched these using pencil…
We then drew a leaf on a piece of foam or cardboard and used this to do some printing. We experimented with the blue and yellow paint to make different shades of green…
Finally, to add even more detail to our webs, we did some sewing and used glitter and sequins. What amazing art work we produced!
This week, our ‘hook with a book’ was ‘The Spider Weaver’ by Margaret Musgrove. After listening to the story, we began our work on spiders. One of our English activities was to produce an informative non-chronological report all about spiders. Before we did this, we watched some videos about these creatures and learnt some very interesting facts. We found out that not all spiders make webs, spiders spin their webs using silk and that no two webs are ever the same. We were also fascinated to find out that spiders carry their eggs around to protect them and baby spiders are called spiderlings. How interesting!
Once we had become spider experts, we were ready to write some informative sentences. We tried hard to punctuate our sentences with a capital letter and full stop. We edited our writing just like Beautiful Butterfly as we went along, checking this and that each sentence made sense.
In our Maths lessons this week, we have been exploring different methods to subtract numbers from one another. Some of us have been just like Helpful Hen and have used the resources in the classroom including hundred squares to help us subtract larger numbers.
We have also been looking at vocabulary linked to subtraction including:
take away
subtract
minus
Miss Stewart then challenged us to use the column subtraction method. We are all now a lot more confident using this and know that the ‘golden rules’ are to subtract the ones first and then subtract the tens. We were then able to apply the method when solving worded problems.
As part of our ‘Leodis to Leeds’ topic, finding all about how Leeds has changed over time, we learnt about a significant individual called Cuthbert Broderick.
We found out that he was an architect born 198 years. We used the timeline in our classroom to remind ourselves of other significant events which took place around this time. We noticed that Cuthbert Broderick was alive at the same time as Grace Darling.
We found out that Cuthbert Broderick designed many of the buildings in Leeds City Centre, including: Leeds Town Hall, Leeds City Museum and The Corn Exchange.
After looking at a photograph of The Corn Exchange, we noticed that it has a glass roof. We found out that when it was first built, it was used by farmers who took their corn to sell. The merchants would carefully examine the quality of the corn by holding it up to the light.
We enjoyed acting this out with our learning buddy…
We have all thoroughly enjoyed our first topic in Year 2, reading several fantastic stories by Anthony Browne. Over the last few weeks, we have produced some excellent pieces of work about the different characters we have met so far.
This week we were all excited to read another story ‘Little Beauty‘ which is about a gorilla who has everything he needs except a friend. That is before he is introduced to a lovely kitten called Beauty who becomes his friend.
This lovely story inspired us to write our own story about two animals who become good friends. With our knowledge of habitats in mind, we planned our stories, thinking carefully about the characters, setting, the problem and how the problem is solved. We were just like Tough Tortoise and worked incredibly hard this morning to write our own story using our plans.
In our Maths lessons this week we are exploring different methods to add numbers together. Our lesson today was quite tricky as we were adding larger numbers but we tried to be resourceful just like Helpful Hen and used the resources to help us.
We used our 100 squares to help us as we know that when we add ten to a number, we can make one jump down on our 100 square. We used our knowledge of place value to help us when adding 30 to a number (three jumps down), 40 to a number (four jumps down) and so on.
By the end of our Maths lesson, we were adding two large numbers using our 100 square.
We spent this morning as shape detectives and enjoyed taking our learning outside. The children were just like Beautiful Butterfly and noticed lots of 2D shapes around us. We carefully counted how many sides and corners each shape had and whether the sides were straight or curved.
After identifying lots of different shapes, the children were challenged to create some shapes using natural materials like sticks and stones. What an exciting morning we had! Maybe you could find some 2D shapes in your house!
