Snow!
Children had great fun in the garden exploring the snow on Thursday. They tried to catch the snowflakes on their tongues and enjoyed making snowballs. We talked about the changes in weather and what would happen to the snow if the sun came out.
Before we went outside, we talked about what we needed to wear. We put an extra set of layers on to make sure that we stayed warm and dry. Children also wore hats and gloves. Can your child put on their own coat, hat and gloves? We’re always looking for ways to help children become more independent; this is a great place to start and something that you can easily help with at home. Try getting ready a few minutes earlier. Depending on what your child can already do, try challenging them to do the next thing independently. If they can put their coat on, can they put on their own mittens, or even trickier, some gloves?
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Spring 2 Week 3!
Can you believe we’re half way through Spring 2 already?! We’ve got even more great things planned for the rest of the term, so watch this space! Here’s what we’ve been learning this week.
The Hundred Decker Bus
This week, we’ve been reading another ‘Hundred Decker’ story by Mike Smith. The Hundred Decker Bus
In this story, a driver who is bored of his daily routine decides to take himself and his passengers on a long ‘adventure’. As more people get on the bus, more decks need to be built!
Linked to the story, we’ve been comparing cities/towns to the countryside, discussing similarities and differences. Countryside is our ‘word of the week’.
We’ve also been playing ‘eye spy’ in our writing task, looking closely at just one of the decks.
Did you know?…
Each morning before phonics, the children take part in an independent writing challenge. They look at an interesting ‘image of the day’ and simply write anything that they notice. This has really boosted the children’s confidence to ‘have a go’ at writing on their own. Take a look at some of this fantastic independent writing.
Computing
This week, we’ve been using Bee-bots. Bee-bots are an early coding resource. Children have to program the bee using directional and ‘GO’ buttons. They have to pre-plan the algorithm they need to enter, to successfully get the bee to its intended location.
RE/ Living and Learning
We’ve been thinking about how special times are celebrated. Wednesday 8 March was the Hindu festival Holi. Here’s what the children remembered about the festival.
For the celebration, they celebrate colours, Spring, love and new life!- Ted
They got messy with paint!- Mollie B
The temple was very special- Tilly
They eat lunch (at the temple)… it’s really nice and special- Esther
We decorated outlines of people with colourful Holi paint.
As a time to celebrate with friends and family, we linked Holi to our living and learning statement: I recognise that friends and family are important. We spoke about our loved ones in our families and some children chose to draw their family too.
Snow much fun!
Snow always brings much excitement. We’ve enjoyed short bursts of time exploring the snow. On Thursday, we had a snowman building competition to see who could build the tallest snowman in ten minutes. Each team decided on a name for their snowman. We had Timmy, Daisy, Mr. Grinch, Chocolate, Slippery, Stanley and Cupcake ⛄ Well done to team Chocolate, who built the tallest snowman at 73cm!
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been comparing numbers and noticing whether change creates a number that is more or less than another.
In provision, we used the ‘bus stop’ number story to explore subtraction (creating less) and recorded our number stories.
Phonics
Spring 2 week 3 has been a review of phase 3 sounds, reading words with two or more digraphs. We review tricky words daily.
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words. Here’s another you could try…
Tricky word stick person (a modified version of the ‘hangman’ game)
We often play this game in class. Write the correct number of dashes for your chosen tricky word and let your child make guesses. Encourage your child to use letter names rather than sounds for spelling tricky words. Draw a part of the stick man for each incorrect guess- you can give extra chances by adding a hat, shoes, gloves etc. to the stick person!
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 the traditional nursery rhyme Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake
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.
As a traditional nursery rhyme, we spoke to the children about how words might change in different versions of the song- you will see this in our video.
Reminders and Dates
Comic Relief: Red Nose Day- 17.03.23 We will be marking the occasion in school with a non-uniform day and invite you to make a donation. Find out more about Comic Relief:
https://www.comicrelief.com/rednoseday/
Reception’s Class Assembly- 24.03.23 3pm You are invited to our class assembly, where we’d love to share our learning with you.
Reception trip to The Railway Museum, York- 30.03.23 Please drop-off and collect your child at the usual times. School can provide a packed lunch but if you’d prefer your child to bring their own, this is also fine. Every child will need a suitable backpack that they are able to carry themselves throughout the day. More details and a letter will be sent home.
Maths – money, money, money!
In Year 2 Maths we are currently learning about money. We are able to recognise coins and notes, and differentiate between pounds and pence, but we are still working on this! We have also been learning to make amounts of money by choosing the correct pounds, pence and notes.
We have used our knowledge of addition and multiplication to perform calculations about money. Next week we will use our knowledge of partitioning, grouping and subtraction to help us with our next block of learning.
Help at home – by showing your child coins and notes and discussing their value. You can also use the money and practice addition.
Writing – all things Dragons!
This half-term our class novel is ‘The Boy Who Grew Dragons’ by author, Andy Shepherd. We are really enjoying reading the book and discovering the mischief that the dragon in the story causes for the main character, Tomas.
Last week in Y2, we drew our own dragons and wrote some adjectives to describe our dragons. We then put the adjectives into some expanded noun phrases.
We have also been learning about possessive apostrophes. We know that these types of apostrophes are used to show belonging/ possession.
See some of our fantastic work below!
Help at home – by encouraging your child to use adjectives to describe things around the home or characters in books you are reading.
Science – working scientifically
This half term our science topic is working scientifically.
During this topic, we will be comparing different roads types and conducting investigations to find out what the best road surface is.
The scientist we will be finding out about is John McAdam. He invented a new way to build roads so that they were smooth, hard and allowed rain to drain away.
Would you have a dragon as a pet? (English – new class novel)
We always have a ‘class novel’ that we read at story time and use to enhance our writing and reading lessons. They have mostly been picture books so far. This term, we are reading a short chapter book – The Boy Who Grew Dragons by Andy Shepherd.
All the classes are reading this book and we are loving it so far! Who wouldn’t want a dragon as a pet?
Help at home by asking what has happened in the book so far. You could borrow a copy from your local library (or buy one if you’d like) to read alongside at home (don’t tell us the ending too soon though). You could also find other books to read by the same author.
Living and learning: I know we’re all the same and we’re all different.
Our circle time has been all about being the same and recognising differences in each other. The children linked up with someone in the class who they felt they didn’t know much about. They spent a few minutes swapping fun facts about each other. They then had to report back what they’d found out. We found out some brilliant facts – who was scared of spiders, who had brothers and sisters, favourite foods and favourite sports. Even I learnt a few things that I didn’t know!
We then discussed how these differences between us are really important and they make us who we are. Wouldn’t it be boring if we were all the same?
At the end of each circle time, we have an open forum in which the children can discuss, in confidence, any worries that might be bothering them. We listen without judgement and offer advice using the sentence stems ‘Would it help if you…’ or ‘Would it help if I…’ The class feel really comfortable in discussing any issues and are brilliantly empathetic towards each other – a really mature group of children.
Help at home by asking your child about circle time. Do they enjoy it? Does it help them?
World Book Day in 3,4B
Books are magical! We enjoyed sharing our favourite books from home and choosing an interesting one to read with a nursery child. We may have made a new bookmark and completed a famous authors word search too. What a wonderful day!
Jack and the Beanstalk
Fee Fi Fo Fum! We loved reading Jack and the Beanstalk this week and re-telling the story using the props in the book corner. Outside, we listened to an audio book of the story, too. We painted beanstalks, explored differed types of beans in the sensory area and we even rolled long ‘sausages’ using dough to make beanstalks in the play dough.
In the maths area, we counted the correct number of bean seeds into the pots and we also practised our subitising skills, saying how many beans (1-3) we could see without counting them.
Your child might have also told you all about planting their own magic bean; we’ve planted some bean seeds and are hoping that our bean stalks will soon start to grow.
Thanks to everyone who has sent in a baby and toddler photograph for our learning next week. If you haven’t had a chance to yet, please see our previous post and e-mail us one if you can.
The Hundred Decker Rocket
This week, we have continued to explore our topic ‘Let go’.
We have been reading the book The Hundred Decker Rocket.
This story is about a girl called Ivy who sets off on a mission to space. On the way, she meets some very messy aliens. When her rocket breaks down, all the aliens help to fix it and make their own deck.
We decided to create our own class rocket. Everyone enjoyed designing their own deck.
Mine is going to have a swimming pool.
Look! It’s got a ball pit.
I’m going to have a slide on my deck.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
Word of the week
Every week, we look at a new adventurous word. We call this our ‘word of the week’. This week our word of the week was ‘expedition’ – linked to the story ‘The Hundred Decker Rocket’. We looked at the definition ‘ A journey with a plan’.
It was like an expedition when I went to London.
I went on an expedition to Lego Land in Denmark.
You might follow signs on an expedition.
Maths
This week, we have focused on consolidating our number sense by rehearsing the order of the first 10 numbers and understanding that the position that each number holds in our number sequence does not change.
By doing this, we were able to explore ‘one more’ and ‘one less’.
I know 3 is one more than 2 because 3 comes after 2.
It goes 4, 5 so 4 is one less than 5.
Phonics
This week, the children have reviewed er, air and longer words that contain double letters.
Write these words on paper and ask your child to underline the double letters before reading.
hammer shimmer cannot chatter muffin
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 Popcorn.
When reading, we focused on the rhythm of the poem and using short, sharp voices.
Science
We had lots of fun exploring magnetic and non-magnetic objects.
We tried scissors and it worked!
Look it’s picking the metal up!
World Book Day
We had such a fabulous day! We started the morning with lots of wonderful stories with our grown-ups. Then, we were visited by children from Year 3,4 and 6. It was lovely to see everyone sharing their favourite books. In our classroom, we engaged in lots of traditional tale themed activities.
