This week Year 2 had the pleasure of a visitor called Phil from the RNLI. Our topic this half term is ‘Journeys’ and it was brilliant to hear about some facts and see some flags that the RNLI use to keep everybody safe when they visit the seaside. He mentioned the story of Grace Darling and how brave she was saving people from the sea, which is where our next Literacy unit links very well to the RNLI. Thank you for visiting us.

We had our ‘Books and Blankets’ morning on Monday. It was lovely to see so many children and adults reading together. Thank you to all that came. We look forward to the next event, whenever that can be!

Last Friday for World Book Day, Year 2 took inspiration from Dr Suess’ and decided to make Green Eggs and Ham. We wrote some instructions about how we could make these in the morning and then lots of brave children tried them that afternoon after making them. It was brilliant to see everyone dressed up and immersing themselves in the essence of the day.

In Maths, we have been learning about Money. Recognising the value of different coins and notes. We even played shopkeepers to buy items from each other.

Elsewhere, we have started to build our own Ferris Wheels in DT and in science are continuing to understand materials and how they are used.

There seems to be a really good buzz in Year 2 at the moment. In Literacy, we created some wonderful stories based on the book we were focusing on called “The Magic Paintbrush’. We are all authors in Year 2!

We are now focusing on a non-chronological report about Singapore. We will then take our understanding of how they are written and write our own about China in the coming weeks. To prepare us for this we managed to face time one of Mrs Renouf’s old colleagues who lives in Singapore to tell us all about the food, animals and way of living out there.

In Maths, we have completed our Unit on Multiplication and Division. We have since looked at the 2-x table, and we have started to focus on the 3-x table this week.

In Science, we have continued to learn more about ‘Growing Up’. We have been really enjoying this topic and was great to see so many photos of everyone as babies and the changes that have happened to us……. though many of us still look exactly the same!

We have all made our Chinese money pouches, and it was great to see the children develop these sewing skills.

Elsewhere, we have continued looking at Dreams and Goals and how we can start to achieve these in PSHE, and we have been developing our Gymnastics skills in PE.

Christmas has arrived in Year 2! We have begun our new story Meerkat Christmas and are following Sunny on his journey around the world in search of the perfect Christmas! We have been learning about the birth of Jesus in RE and were lucky enough to be invited to St Peters Church where we met the characters from the Christmas story. Reverend Kate took us on a journey around the church to meet the Shepherds, the Three Wise Men, Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus himself!

In science this term we have been exploring habitats, understanding food chains and learning about life cycles. We went on a scientific expedition to Creature Corner where we explored the different habitats looking for insects, plants and creatures. We found many micro habitats and learnt how they all work together to keep each other alive. Next, we are hoping to grow our own plants and discover how they change as they grow! 

Our first week back after half term has been another action-packed week in Year 2! We have continued to add and subtract numbers up to 1000 in Maths, this week with regrouping our ones and tens in additions.

We have started our new topic in Literacy, we have looked at our new book called ‘Winter Sleep’ in where we are researching hibernating animals. To enhance our learning, we had a special visitor on Wednesday morning. ‘Safari Stu’ came in to see us and bought some of his amazing animals with him. We were lucky enough to learn about some animals that hibernate and others that don’t and some of the reasons why. Some of us were even brave enough to hold, chameleons, giant cockroaches, stick insects from Papua New Guinea, lizards, a tortoise, a tenrec, some snakes and a tarantula!!!

In Geography we have started to look at Antarctica and the conditions that exist there. We have also started a new Art topic in where we made letters of the alphabet using our bodies to create the shapes! It’s fair to say it's been an exciting week back in Year 2!

We have been reading the story ‘The owl who was afraid of the dark’ and writing our own version of the story in literacy. During the book, Plop the owl meets a young boy who takes him to a campfire. So that we could immerse ourselves in the experience, we went down to creature corner and had a campfire! We watched as the dancing flames grew taller, while warming our hands from the heat of the fire. We roasted marshmallows and sang songs till eventually the flames disappeared. We came back to class and created lots of vocabulary about our experience.

To help us in our writing we were lucky enough to have the birds of prey workshop come into school. We learnt about different types of owls - did you know not all owls are nocturnal!  Some of us were brave enough to hold the birds on our arms - it was a real hoot!

In science we are designing our own catapult, but first we need to test and decide which materials to use. This week we have been testing different materials to see what properties they have - rigid, squishy, stretchy, bendy and twisty. We decided that if we made a skipping rope, we could use a bendy pipe, but it would be easier to use a more flexible rope!

What a creative and action packed few weeks in Year 2.

We will start off by congratulating Kayden on his Headteachers Award!  We are so proud of you Kayden.

In Year 2, we have been learning how to sew.  We began by using a template and cutting our fabric to size, we then had to secure our pieces of fabric using a running stitch.  Our final product was a small pouch to store our treasures!

We are fully immersed in Maps and Geography this week and absolutely loved our campfire experience with marshmallows and hot chocolate.  We have used an atlas and maps to plan a route and to find different place across the UK.  We have also conducted a science experiment to show the importance of handwashing using pepper and washing up liquid!