As part of our ‘materials‘ topic, we have been thinking about different properties and why materials are used for different purposes.
This week, we thought about the word malleable and changed the shape of play dough by bending, squashing and twisting it.
We then thought about different objects around the classroom that are bendy and stiff.
We enjoyed taking our learning outside today when learning about volume. We used cups to measure how much water each container holds and used vocabulary such as: full, half full, almost full and empty to describe our observations.
We found out that the lemonade and milk bottles have the greatest volume as they both hold 9 1/2 cups of water which we now know is the same as 2 litres.
The hand sanitiser bottle holds the least amount of water as it only filled half of our cup.
Challenge…
Can you find anything in your house that holds more liquid than a 2 litre milk bottle?
We thoroughly enjoyed creating our own 3D flower using tissue paper and wire. To make such beautiful flowers, we had to twist and scrunch the tissue paper and carefully bend and wrap the wire. Attaching the flower (tissue paper) to the stem (wire) was quite tricky so we were just like Team Ant and helped our partner. We even added some leaves to the flowers.
How beautiful these are!
We were intrigued to find out what our next English topic will be based on and were very excited when we heard it involves dragons!
Before we read the story, ‘Kassim and the Greedy Dragon’, we enjoyed making our own paper dragon. As you can see, some of these were quite fierce looking with razor sharp teeth and breathing fire.
We have all thoroughly enjoyed our English topic this half term which has been based around the story ‘Meerkat Mail.’
Before reading the story, which we knew from the title would involve meerkats, we needed to find out more about this type of animal. We worked collaboratively as a class, just like Team Ant, to research meerkats before writing some very informative non-chronological reports of our own. We focused on a meerkat’s appearance, diet and habitat. How fascinating these animals are!
After finding out that meerkats live in the Kalahari desert in Africa and looking at photos of what it is like there, we enjoyed creating a piece of artwork using oil pastels and water colours.
In Geography, we worked collaboratively with our partner to locate Africa on a map of the world and then the Kalahari Desert on a map of Africa using an atlas. We also used Google Earth to see how far Africa is from the UK.
We we all very excited to read the story which is about a meerkat named Sunny who lives in the Kalahari Desert with his family. Sunny thinks it is too hot and dry so he decides to leave and go exploring in search of another place to live. After spending a whole week travelling, Sunny doesn’t find anywhere that feels like home so decides to return to the Kalahari Desert.
We thoroughly enjoyed the story and all worked very hard to learn it off by heart, using some actions to help us remember the key words and phrases. After we could retell it confidently, we knew that we were ready to innovate the story (make it our own). We did this by changing the name of the main character and the places he/she visits. We had lots of fun editing our own story map and then boxing up the main parts (opening, build up, problem, resolution and ending). We used these to help us write our story with the changes we made. We tried to be just like Beautiful Butterfly and used our green pens to edit our writing, checking that we had correctly punctuated each sentence and that each sentence made sense.
We are very proud of the fantastic stories we wrote.
In our Science lessons this half term we will be learning all about plants. We began by recapping everything that we could remember about plants from our Year 1 learning. We knew some of the names of the main parts including: stem, petals, leaves and roots.
After thinking about the different plants that we know, we enjoyed taking our learning outside. We noticed lots of plants around us which we drew pictures of. We looked carefully at the shape and size of the petals and the colours of the petals.
We noticed that there are lots of different types of plants and they look very different to each other.
Despite having to do all of our learning at home this week, 2S have continued to be just like Tough Tortoise and have shown a hardworking attitude towards their work.
One of our challenges was to make a snack or meal to enjoy. After we made this and had tucked into it, we wrote a set of instructions so that Miss Stewart would be able to have a go at making it too. We tried hard to use time openers including: first, second, third, then, next, after that, finally. Some of us even challenged ourselves to add some adverbs to our sentences such as: carefully, gently, slowly and quickly.
How yummy our creations were!
After reading the poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat‘, Year 2 were very excited to find out what happens to them both after they got married. We have all loved reading the beginning of the story ‘The Further Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat’ by Julia Donaldson.
In the story, the owl and pussycat wake up to discover that their wedding ring has been taken.
Although we, as the reader, know that it was the crow who took the ring, the owl and pussycat haven’t yet solved the mystery. They set off on their adventure to locate the thief.
The children enjoyed making their own relief collage of the two characters using several cutting techniques and using paper in different ways to make it stand off the page. Here is a sample of some of our amazing artwork…
“The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.”
We were intrigued to begin our new topic this week ‘In the Light of the Moon’. Before reading the poem, we began our work on owls. Lots of us remembered from our work on habitats in the Autumn term that most owls are nocturnal which means that they sleep during the day and come out to hunt at night time. Our challenge was to write an informative fact file all about owls. Knowing that fact files are non-fiction (they are full of facts and accurate information unlike a story that is made up), we had to do some research. We were resourceful, just like Helpful Hen, and used the internet, videos, books on EPIC and an owl information sheet to find out lots of interesting facts. How fascinating these animals are!
After this, many of us had quickly become owl experts and were ready to create our fact file. We tried hard to use the conjunctions ‘but‘, ‘so‘ and ‘because‘ to extend our sentences and add extra information. Did you know a baby owl is called an owlet or a fledgling? We were also surprised to find out that owls live on all of continents except Antarctica because it is too cold there.
We always love to express our creativity in Year 2 so had lots of fun producing a piece of owl art work. Some of used coloured pencils, pastels or paint whereas some of us decided to make a 3D model of an owl. How amazing our creations are!
Some of the children working in school thoroughly enjoyed using plasticine to create a model of the owl and the pussycat in their pea-green boat. In fact, some of us were so excited, we even thought about where they traveled to to get married. Of course, including the pig who provided the ring and the turkey who married them.
The children working in school used newspaper and magazines to create a collage of an owl or used chalk to draw a very detailed picture, remembering the different parts: large eyes, beak, sharp talons, feathers.
