This year we are performing A Magical Christmas Jigsaw by Out of the Ark music. We are just beginning to learn the words to the songs and lyrics were sent home to parents on Friday to enable the children to practise. The children already love the songs although we’ve only run through them a couple of times. They can also be found here: The Magical Christmas Jigsaw -words
Well done to everyone who has been telling me all about the wonderful things they have been doing for their homework. I am very much looking forward to see what you have been busy learning and producing. Just to remind you that they don’t need to be brought in yet – you still have some time to do your very best efforts. Here is the grid in case you need it.
In maths we were learning about 2d shapes and deciding how to sort them in different ways. You can see in the photos that we had two ways of sorting them. Mrs Newbury was very excited when Honey had a shape that did not fit either criteria so she placed it on the outside of the venn diagram. When somebody says or does something that is fantastic, Mrs Newbury plays ‘That’s the way uh huh, uh huh, I like it’ by KC and the Sunshine Band and we all join in!
Planning our stories is an important part of writing our stories. It is an opportunity to get our ideas down on paper without worrying about the detail at this point. Mrs Newbury encourages us to include some adventurous words and phrases that will bring our writing to life! Wardour class are very good at adding adjectives that are not boring. We have a synonym resource on the wall which has lots of different words to use instead of boring ones.
Our science investigations this time was to find which material would be the most waterproof. We chose a range of materials such as paper, foil, cotton, plastic and tissue paper. Again we looked at how we could make it a fair test, so we agreed how many drops of water we would use for each type of material. After predicting which one we thought would be the best we begun our investigation.
This was an exciting investigation as we had to attach strips of the same length the a table and see how many twists it would take for the paper to break. We made our predictions and then worked as a team to carry out the investigation. Some types of paper were stronger than we had predicted.
Our science unit is materials and we were investigating which types of paper were more or less absorbent than others. A s you can see, we were making sure that the tests were fair as well as practising our maths skills by tallying how many drops we used.
Although the sky was grey, it didn’t dampen the excitement of Wardour Class for their visit to Farleigh Castle. We have been learning all about castles, defence systems, features and the people who worked in them. In Literacy our class text was George and the dragon which links well as in the chapel at the castle there is one of the earliest wall paintings of St. George dating back from the 1400s. Much fun was had, especially dressing up and pretending to be people who worked in the castle. We also became history detectives and put on white gloves to examine artefacts found in the castle. The magnifying glasses helped us to see all the wonderful details and helped us to guess what they were and what they were used for. Another activity was designing shields and understanding what the different symbols, animals and colours mean. We all had a brilliant time as you can see in the photos below.
Bowood Class have been learning about Mary Anning and her contribution to the world of Science (even though she was not a scientist). While we are discovering lots of exciting things about dinosaurs and the Jurassic Coast, we thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for children to actually experience fossil hunting first hand by actually visiting the Jurassic Coast to find fossils of their very own and for our class museum. It was a cloudy, warm day – perfect for the beach and we starting hunting the very moment we arrived. We found some ammonites and other fossils but the children were able to identify igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks as well as explain coastal erosion – AMAZING!!!! It just goes to show that they can apply what they have learnt over the last term with enthusiasm and understanding. I was very impressed by their range of knowledge.
An excellent day was had by all!
Once we had designed the models we began building them and inserting the pneumatics to make it move. Some of us changed our design slightly to improve it. Then, once we were happy, we painted our models and added features to make them look fearsome! We evaluated them and took photos to add to our design booklet. We are very proud of them!
Whizzy Wardour's Class Blog - Year 2 