Welcome to Doves Class. Our teacher is Mrs Cuthbertson.
We have explored the work of Mark Garlick and how he has created space art and art work of imaginary planets. We used balloons, marbles, water and paint to create our own unusual and unique pieces of planet art. We have learnt to look for signs of spring and how to draw daffodils. We have evaluated our work and said which pieces we like and why we like them.
We celebrated Chinese New Year a day early this year! This year was the year of the Dragon! We learnt about how the years were named after different animals and why people throw oranges into the wishing tree. We even tried throwing our own wishes into the tree at school! We tried to write Chinese numbers and created paper Chinese lanterns. We learnt that other cultures have traditions just like we do.
In Geography we have learnt about how the weather affects our lives and how different weather happens around the world. We know that a desert can be hot or cold and that it depends on the amount of rainfall there is. We know the equator is closest to the sun and why we have different seasons.
We have learnt about pictograms and how to create a pictogram. We have learnt to use the iPad to make our own pictograms and know that a pictogram can be used to show different attributes of objects.
We have taken part in lots of investigation and practical maths. We have explored counting in different groups, fractions, multiplication and shape. We have discovered properties of shape and investigated symmetry.
This term we have been exploring the rhyme of music and how to keep the tempo and the pulse of music. We have discovered how to use two beaters to play the chime bars.
The Kestrels asked us to contribute to a money tree to help us improve our wall garden and our tranquillity garden. We collected quite a lot money and nearly filled up 4 parts of the tree!
We had a really exciting World Book Day. Our class had the most entries to the make a book hat! Well done everyone your hats were absolutely amazing! We had travelling story tellers visit our class and read us a story. Our favourite story was called Gigantic, and it was about a tiny whale with a big heart.
In PE we learnt about how to play group games and the fairness of rules. We even created our own games to play and then demonstrated them to our class so others could play them too.
In science we learnt how amazing our bodies are and how important our senses our to us. We investigated if the size of our feet meant we needed to wear bigger gloves! We explored how sound can be affected by distance or by wearing a hood.
We also learnt about materials and their properties. Some materials are stronger than others and some are more useful than others but that different materials can be used for different things.
We had a really amazing Space Day! Some children even said it was the best day ever! We explored space science and how chemical reactions make things change. The planetarium was out of this world! Lucy showed us how the sun has solar flares which causes the Northern Lights here on Earth. She told us all about the solar system and showed us the night sky! Wethen ordered the planets and created Aurora pictures using oil pastels.
We have learnt about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot to kill King James I. We know that Guy Fawkes was not the leader but he was the one that caught in the cellar with the gunpowder. We made our own guy and burnt him in the forest area. We know that King James I decreed that people should not ever forget the gunpowder plot.
We learnt about Remembrance Day and the purpose of remembering with poppies. We painted our own poppies and used a square grid to make a life-sized Tommy. We filled Tommy with poppies and stood him with our poems on remembrance.
We have learnt about how things in the 1960s have influenced some of the things we have today.
In science we went investigating things that were alive, never alive and once alive. We had a good look around the school grounds.
We looked how the environment of different habitats is suitable for different living things. We made our own paper dioramas to show how an environment is suitable for an animal of our own choice.
We used our knowledge of moving parts to make our own pop up toys. We designed our toys and then chose the materials we needed to make our own pop up toy.
In computing we completed an unplugged activity. This activity was to create a simple algorithm to move blocks from one bowl to another. We were able to debug our algorithm if they didn’t work.
We had a fabulous party day based on the short film of the Snowman. We created melted snowmen biscuits, snowmen party hats, had a visit from Santa and played lots of party games.
What a busy first term we have had!
This term we have been learning to use the room, make new friends and learn all about world around us. We have had a fabulous time and have learnt so much in these first weeks of being in Year 2.
In maths we have been working hard to understand two-digit numbers and where they belong on number lines and 100 squares. We have made our own 100 squares with cards, and we had to learn to sort the cards into number families by looking at the tens and ones. We have learnt to partition numbers into tens and ones, and we know that the tens number is the first number we read. We have learnt to add and subtract with objects, on a number line and have tried some mental calculations too! We have been learning the multiplication facts of 2 and 10.
We have all worked hard in our Read Write Inc groups and have all made progress with our reading and writing. Remember to keep rereading your reading book and to share your library books with your family.
Discover and do time is working well and we have created some fabulous projects. We have made farms, houses, towns, maps and amazing vehicles in all sorts of shapes and sizes. We have discovered the tinker table and created some great pictures. All our discover and do projects go onto our seesaw pages or into our black learning journal.
We have been learning about Wild and Wonderful Creatures this term and have been sorting them into different animal categories. We have looked and similarities of each category, so we know that birds have feathers and beaks, and fish live in water and have scales and gills. We looked at what humans need to survive, and we even got “trapped” on a desert island. Here we had think about the things we would need to survive and not about the things that we wanted. Then we had to send messages in bottles to tell people what we needed to survive!
In RE we have been looking at Islam and making comparisons with how Muslims and Christians live their lives. We have looked at how babies are welcomed into the world in both Muslims Community and a Christian Community. We got to make christening cards, crosses and got to guess what was inside a christening gift! Promises are very important during a christening, so we made a promise and put it on a promise tree to see how easy it was to keep a promise for one week!
We have been learning about the importance of being safe when we are online. We have explored the different things we do online. We know that some people can be unkind online and that we should tell an adult if we are unsure about something or if someone does something that upsets us. We each created our own hand of safety, and we know who can help us if we need help to stay safe online.
In Art we have learnt about the work of Vincet Van Gogh and Claude Monet. We looked at brush strokes and how to create the same painting style of Van Gogh and Monet. We used the painting techniques like Monet to get a stippled Christmas tree effect. Then we dotted on the baubles.
