Year 2 have been using their science skills and have been looking at naming and identifying common animals that are birds, fish, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. We used our research skills to find out what each group of animals had in common. We are sorting superstars!
In our ‘Going Wild’ theme we have been looking at animal prints and the different textures, colours and combinations our wild animals have. In art we have tried to copy these prints using a range of materials and techniques. We then designed our own print for our imaginary animal.
Year 2 took part in a decorated egg competition. Here are our entries. Can you spot a winner?
As part of our ‘Children’s Champion’ theme we have been looking at how schools used to be during Thomas Barnardo’s time and why he decided to step in to help the most poverty stricken children. He created ‘Ragged Schools’ in which all children who were without a home or were poor could access eductaion. They had 3 lessons, the 3 R’s (riting, reading and rithmatic). We have decided we don not want to be in a Victorian school as the chalk made our hands mucky and we couldn’t talk!
In 2 Blue this week we have been looking at measuring in centimetres and metres. We have measured long and short items around our classroom and in the wider school. We looked at all of the different ways in which measuring can be done, our favourite was the Trundle wheel! We know that to get an accurate measurement we must make sure we line our ruler or tape measure up nice and straight and that we start at zero.
We went on our class trip to Hartlepool Marina where we visited the HMS Trincomalee, a Royal Navy vessel which is more than 200 yrs old! We looked at different artefacts that would be used on voyages and explored the ship from the gun deck to the captains quarters. We looked around the Hartlepool navy museum and found out lots of interesting facts such as: Each sailor had a number on their hammock and when they died their number was up and they were wrapped in their hammock. They were even sewn into the hammock with the last stitch going through their nose! This was done in case any of the sneaky sailors pretended they were dead to escape the life at sea. Despite the weather being terrible the children had a great time!
For our book week this year we have chosen Cinderella as our feature book. We wrote a fractured fairytale about Cinderella where we changed an important part of the story, she may have lost her purse instead of a glass slipper or she may have gone swimming instead of to the ball. The children had lots of fun coming up with their own version. We the invited our parents in to read with us which we thought was amazing. We ended book week with a day of dressing up and all things fairytale. We created bridges, castles and beanstalks in the hall, read stories in the witches cottage, performed our own stories in the performance area, went on scavenger hunts to find letters to make words and hunting down 46 different fairytale creature around the school. We have had an amazing week and can’t wait to see what next years theme is!
We are really enjoying our Land Ahoy theme but we encountered a problem! Our pirate only has one hand and there are lots of jobs to do on a ship. We designed a remote control to help him with his daily tasks and we added a variety of buttons for weather reports, kidstube, loud speaker (to shout at the crew). We also made it water proof because as you know pirates spend most of their time voyaging around the seas.
As part of our Land Ahoy theme we have been looking at different types of boats and how they move. We looked at pushing and pulling and decided that we would design and build a transport for our boat which would then be used to launch our boat successfully into the water. We used a range of materials and had great fun designing and redesigning our prototypes. We realised that some ideas may sound good but when we tried them they did not work so we had to work as a team to problem solve and complete our mission.
We have been looking at the impressionist painter Claude Monet. We loved his use of colour and shades in ‘The Waves’. We made a graduated colour chart to show the different blues we could make and then we tried our best to recreate the famous picture. 
