“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.

Year 2 have worked incredibly hard this half term and have been fascinated to learn about some wonderful explorers.

After finding out that Captain James Cook was a sailor and explored the world on his three voyages, we started our work on oceans. How amazing they are! We now know that there are five in the world and learnt some very interesting facts about them. We were fascinated to find out that oceans have 5 layers and enjoyed learning about the creatures that live there.

We enjoyed making a model of the ship Captain Cook used for his first voyage The ‘Endeavour’ and of Tahiti, the island he visited to observe the Transit of Venus.

After learning all about the adventures of Captain Cook and Neil Armstrong, we were very keen to find out about other explorers including Mae Jemison and Amelia Earhart. To conclude our ‘Explorers’ topic, we were set the challenge of completing a project of our own about an explorer of our choice.

To do this, we were very resourceful just like Helpful Hen and carried out lots of research so that we could create a fact file.

Thinking like a geographer, we plotted the explorer’s journey on a map of the world. Those of us who researched Neil Armstrong or Mae Jemison drew our own map showing their journey into space.

We had lots of fun making models, drawing/painting pictures and portraits of our chosen explorer. How creative we are in Year 2!

We were all very excited to check on our mini-beast hotel this morning. We were fascinated to find that some of them did in fact have some visitors. Some of the mini-beasts we found included: woodlice, worms, ants and a slug. How exciting!

We used our observations to make some simple conclusions and decided that these mini-beasts were there because it was dark and damp.

In geography this week, we found out about the weather in India and compared it to the UK. We also found out about the monsoon season and how much it rains during this time (June to September). In our music lesson this morning, we had lots of fun working in groups to create the sounds of a monsoon using body percussion. How fantastic we were!

We incorporated: clicking, leg patting, stamping, jumping and clapping into our performances and changed the pace and volume to represent the rain getting heavily.

We worked collaboratively in our Science lesson today just like Team Ant and thoroughly enjoyed creating a mini-beast hotel. To do this, we used: soil, sticks, logs, stones and cardboard. We are looking forward to checking these next week to see if we have had any visitors!

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! 

Following on from our Science lesson, we enjoyed using leaves to make our own nocturnal animal.

Here is a small selection…

Edie’s owl…

Ruby’s owls…

Zahra’s owl…

Lola’s bat…

Riley’s badger…

Dhilan’s owl…

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.

What fantastic reports we wrote!