Science: we are chemists
The children have been focusing on scientific enquiry this week – looking at fair and comparative tests. They got the opportunity to see that when you mix baking powder with vinegar, it causes a chemical reaction. This reaction produces carbon dioxide. The children created this chemical reaction within a plastic bottle with a balloon attached to the top. The carbon dioxide caused the balloon to inflate. The children were able to alter the variables in the experiment and compare results. For example, some children increased the amount of baking powder, whilst others increased the amount of vinegar. We had great fun observing the results. They were able to recognise that this chemical reaction was irreversible. They also applied some previously learnt vocabulary to their explanations, such as solute and solution.
Luckily, we all survived the experiment without any big explosions!
Help at home: Can yo help your child learn the science vocabulary for this half term?
Maths – dividing by 2
Our current Maths focus in Year 2 is multiplication and division. This week in 2C, we have been practising dividing by 2 by using sharing and grouping methods.
‘We know that dividing by two also means halving.’
Today, we worked in small groups to divide even numbers equally into two groups.
Help at home by collecting objects in the house such as fruit, coins or beads and dividing them equally into 2 groups. Make sure that you collect an equal number of objects! Challenge your child by asking them to explain why you have chosen an even number to divide into 2!
Geography topic and thanks to Scholes in Bloom
We really enjoyed our Geography topic last half term. We discovered an issue with pollution (litter) in our school grounds after doing a survey. So, we decided to sort it out! We made posters to remind ourselves to recycle and bin our rubbish and also did a litter pick with pickers borrowed from Scholes in Bloom.
Nursery Coffee Morning
After dropping your child off at Nursery on Tuesday 28 February, why not join us for a cup of tea or coffee and an informal chat with Miss Hague and Mrs Beesley. It’s also a great way to get to know other parents and carers. We hope that you can join us, even if it’s just for a quick drink and hello, before you go to work!
Poem of the week performed by 1,2B – Ice Lolly
We’re loving reading and learning a poem (or song) each week. This week, we read Ice Lolly by Pie Corbett. You can watch it here. It helps with our remembering, fluency and prosody skills.
Dinosaur footprints
In the last week of half term, children continued to enjoy learning about dinosaurs.
We drew giant dinosaur footprints to jump/hop between outside and we made dinosaur footprints in paint and playdough.
Children loved using rollers to paint large dinosaurs from the story we’ve been reading, Dinosaur Roar. We talked about the features of the dinosaurs; some had long necks and tails and others had spikes and lumpy skin. When we were painting them, children noticed that some of the colours changed when they mixed together. Look out for our giant dinosaurs in the Sunshine Room, soon!
We hope that you all have a lovely half term break and look forward to seeing you on Monday 20 February.
Great Fairies of the World
Great Fairies of the World
This week, we’ve been reading Great Fairies of the World by Stephanie Moss. This rhyming story features fairy characters that have jobs that help others; architect fairy, doctor fairy and engineer fairy, to name just a few! We’ve been discussing how the author uses the most interesting descriptions/words that they can think of. We’ve been describing images and making words more adventurous. This has helped develop our oracy skills and helped us in our writing too.
In our writing, we’ve created our own fairy characters and written about the jobs that they do.
In provision, we’ve linked our fiction reading to non-fiction information about real-life heroes in the community.
We’ve also used the fairy theme in our classroom challenges.
Living and learning: Internet Safety
This week’s living and learning statement is: I know that people should treat others respectfully when online.
This has coincided with Safer Internet Day (Tuesday 7 February)
When asked what being ‘online’ means and what you can do online, the children said:
It’s something on your phone- Sonny…
Or your iPad- Harry…
Or your tablet- Orlah…
Or your computer- Daniel
You can buy things on the phone- Skyla
You can send money to people- Grace
On iPads you can call someone- Mollie
Alexa!-Bella
We spoke about some important uses for the internet, such as the way we use it for our learning- our eBooks. We discussed how we should limit our time online to keep our body and brain healthy and why we shouldn’t use electronic devices close to bed time.
In Reception, we’ve used the story The Adventures of Smartie the Penguin to talk about internet safety. Smartie receives a tablet for his birthday but encounters some problems such as adverts, websites that are too old for him and people saying unkind things online, during a game. He makes the right decisions and always asks Mummy and Daddy for help. There is a memorable song throughout the story:
before you tap and click… you need to stop and think… and TELL someone!
Ask your child what they can remember about keeping safe online.
Maths: Length and height
We’ve been developing our understanding of how to compare and measure length and height. We’ve been ordering by length and comparing the length of objects; saying which are shorter, longer, the shortest, the longest, the same (equal). We’ve been measuring objects using non-standard forms of measurement. We measured the length of our bodies using different objects.
We built towers to compare height; saying which are taller, shorter and equal. We’ve ordered ourselves by height and have estimated how many bricks tall we are.
Phonics
It’s assessment week in phonics. We’ve been reviewing and revisiting our Spring 1 learning. Your child will have come home with a grapheme mat and a tricky word mat. If any sounds are highlighted on the grapheme mat, these are those that your child is not yet secure on. Please keep practising these at home.
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! In Little Wandle phase 3, we learnt lots of new words. The children will continue to learn new tricky words fairly rapidly over the Spring 2 and Summer terms. We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words. Here’s another you could try!
Musical tricky words
- Write the tricky words on individual pieces of paper, lay them out on the floor
- Play your child’s favourite song for them to dance around to
- When the music stops, your child should pick a word to quickly run to and stand on
- Your child reads the word they have landed on
- Remove that word and repeat until there are no words left!
Focus Artist: Yayoi Kusama
Over the last few weeks we’ve been exploring the art of Yayoi Kusama. We’ve been colour mixing and using the paint to make dot pictures, drawn spots onto pumpkin pictures and decorated a vegetable using playdough spots. We’ve also made our own artwork, inspired by the artist.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is Furry, furry squirrel
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm. Can your child re-tell this week’s poem to you?
Fiddly fingers stay and play
Wow! Another fantastically busy stay and play last Friday. Thank you to parents and carers who were able to attend. The focus was on the development of fine motor skills and we aimed to demonstrate a range of activities that can be easily replicated at home. We hope you all enjoyed our Fiddly Fingers session!
Half-term sponsored maths challenge
Your child has brought home a tens-frame sponsored challenge, for over half-term. All sponsorship money will go towards classroom resources and this year’s chosen charity- Cancer Research UK.
Reminders
SWIMMING DATES- Spring 2
Rainbow Class- 22 Feb, 8 Mar, 22 Mar
Sunshine Class- 1 Mar, 15 Mar, 29 Mar
These dates are also stuck to your child’s classroom door or window to view whenever needed.
When not swimming, this half term’s PE focus will be developing ball skills and counter balancing in pairs.
World Book Day 2023: Stay and Read – Thursday 02 March Time and further details to follow.
Happy half term! Enjoy the break and we’ll see you again on Monday 20 February.
Maths – division
This week in 2C we have been practicing dividing by 2, 5 and 10. We have had lots of practice sharing cubes and other classroom objects into equal groups. We have also been practicing different equations on our whiteboards by grouping.
Help at home by practicing dividing objects into equal groups!
Living and Learning : Safer Internet Day
We worked really hard on Safer Internet Day to learn about how to stay safe online. We wrote about what we can do to stay safe online and read a story, Chicken Clicking, to help us understand this too.
Help at home by making sure your children know your rules about going on the internet at home.
Living and Learning – Internet Safety
Our theme in Living and Learning for Weeks 5 and 6 of term is being safe online.
Last week, we had a visitor from D:Side come to talk to us about making good choices online to keep ourselves safe, including why games are given certain age ratings and what things might be appropriate for us to see, as well as understanding that people might not be who they say they are online and the importance of only speaking to people we know.
This week, for Safer Internet Day (07.02), we learnt about fake news and how to spot it. We considered which sources are trustworthy and which aren’t. We also talked about what we mean by ‘personal data’, the importance of keeping it private, and how our data can be used by others.
Help at home by discussing these themes with your child and the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘personal data’. 
