Array Hunt!
This week Meerkats Class have been exercising their multiplication skills and completing lots of great maths. We went on an array hunt around school and, once we started looking for arrays of neat rows and columns, we saw them everywhere! See if you can find arrays at home too.
Our Baking Day Secret!
One of the texts we have been exploring for our new Big Question is the Katie Morag story 'Baking Day Secret'. Our pre-learning task was to bake a treat better than Katie Morag's Mum (not very difficult!). Lots of our Marvellous Meerkats are star bakers and cooked some wonderful treats. Prepare to feel very hungry when you look at them! Our mob made cakes, cookies, brownie and Easter nests. What a bunch of clever bakers! Thank you to our helpful adults who helped us kick off our new Big Question in yummy style!
Marvellous Meerkat Chocolate Factory!
This week we have been learning about Grace Darling souvenirs and were particularly interested in the box of chocolates. We have already investigated healthy wraps and food groups in our D&T sessions so we turned our attention to unhealthy snacks we might have as a treat and designed our own Grace Darling chocolate bar. Because you can never have too much chocolate at Easter!
We gave our bar a Grace Darling themed name and made a box for it using a cuboid net. Pupils were very keen to try their marvellous creations and hopefully they shared them too!
Easter Egg Hunt!
As part of our Easter celebrations in school we had an Easter egg hunt in the playground on Wednesday. It did not take us long to find all of the chocolate! Thank you to Mrs Horner and School Council for organising this treat.
Islam Workshop
Mrs Beresford organised an Islam workshop from Derby Open Centre to complete our learning about Muslims. We investigated the similarities and dfifferences between our celebrations and those on the Muslim lunar calendar. We then made Eid Mubarak bunting, sampled some treats to celebrate Eid and tried on some Eid party clothes. Sana Khan was impressed with our behaviour and how much we already knew about Islam. We asked some thoughful questions and had a super time learning how Muslims celebrate at special times of the year.
Grace Darling Souvenirs!
One of our sticky words for our Grace Darling Big Question is 'souvenir'. We know this means 'something you keep to remind you of a place or event'. We had a look at the different Grace Darling souvenirs that were available to the Victorians who were very interested in her brave rescue. We then made our own souvenirs to commemorate the event.
It's a wrap!
This week our Design and Technology learning has involved planning, designing, making and evaulating healthy wraps. We have been investigating food groups and healthy eating to design a lunchtime wrap and put our learning and planning to the test by making and tasting our final designs. We chopped, snipped and grated our ingredients representing protein, dairy and fruit & vegetables. After trying our own creation, we then sampled others from our group and put our heads together to come up with a final perfect wrap recipe. We have some budding chefs in Meerkat Class and lots of the wraps scored 5/5 for taste. Some pupils even tried ingredients they don't usually like and discovered they do actually enjoy them! Much nicer than a disgusting sandwich!
We are film stars!
At the beginning of this half-term Mr Pepper spent a day with Year 2 teaching us about life boats and Grace Darling. As part of this day, we made a film telling the Grace Darling story and explaining what we had learnt. We had great fun acting in front of the green screen and saw the completed epic this week. We are all stars!
Watch our movie below:
Pre-Learning Task: Floating STEM task.
For our new Big Question about Grace Darling, pupils were asked to use their engineering skills and make something that floats. We had a fleet of boats and floating craft, including a lifeboat! We borrowed the water container form Sheep class today and checked if they could float. They all passed the floating test! Well done to all pupils and parents who completed the task. It was a super start to our History question!
Eeeeeeeww! Disgusting Sandwiches!
We have been exploring the book The Disgusting Sandwich by Gareth Edwards in our English lessons and last week we made our own yukky snacks with Miss O'Reilly. The pupils did a great job of making some truly revolting looking sandwiches and were relieved when they were told they didn't actually have to eat them! We are now going to write some great instructions about making disgusting sandwiches. Don't take a look if you are feeling a bit queasy - they might make you sick!
World Book Day 2024!
Our meerkat mob looked fantastic today in their World Book Day costumes. Thank you to parents for making such a fantastic effort. It was super hard to choose a costume winner in Year 2!
Throughout the morning, pupils moved round in mixed age groups completing book based activities. It was great to see the Year 2 Meerkats working with and helping the Elephants and Sheep. Not only did the Year 2 pupils look great today but they behaved brilliantly too. You should be very proud of your book-loving children!
Milkshakes!
We have been investigating how to write a set of instructions in our English lessons this week. We followed a simple instructions text to make milkshakes and will use our knowledge of instructions features to write up the recipe. Next week we will be making disgusting sandwiches (eeewww!) - we much prefer milkshakes!
Grace Darling Day with Mr Pepper
This week we had a whole day of learning through film with Mr Pepper. We looked at clips of different lifeboats and discovered all of the clever things they have on board to help save lives. We then learnt the Grace Darling story and discovered what a brave rescue she did! In the afternoon, we saw a real-life lifeboat rescue and then made our own film in front of the green screen. Some of our meerkats did some super acting and all spoke clearly for our lifeboat film. We can't wait to see how it looks with a bit of movie magic! Coming soon to our webpage...
Reading Buddy Treat!
Pupils worked hard on their reading buddy homework this half-term, completing Year 2 reading comprehensions. Their reading skills are getting better and better! As a treat for their progress in reading, our meerkat mob watched 'Kubo & The 2 Strings', an animated film set in ancient Japan that included some magic origami! We had popcorn, sweets and treats. It was a fun end to our wonderful Big Question work on Japan. Well done meerkats!
Japan Collage!
We have been learning about the artform of collage this half-term and investigated the work of some famous collage artists. We then used our assembling skills to cut and stick lots of things Japanese to make these wonderful Big Question collages. There were lots of happy accidents as we cut, ripped, painted and stuck things down. We could open our own collage gallery!
David Nieper Enterprise Morning
Our meerkat mob had a fantastic morning when they visited David Nieper Academy for enterprise activities. We played Top Trumps, designed our own monsters, worked as a team to make a Monster Top Trump card, fashioned a monster from salt dough and created a monster fact file. It was a busy morning! Pupils showed great teamwork in working together to achieve their goals and we almost won the final Top Trumps game against other schools. Behaviour was excellent and the meerkat mob made us very proud!
Thank you to David Nieper for organising the morning and, once again, thank you to Year 2 for being a credit to the school and yourselves.
Japanese Numbers
We have been learning to count to 10 in Japanese. We gave each number an action and, once we knew our Japanese numbers, played BINGO Japan style! Check out the video clips of our super counting:
Japan Day!
Konnichiwa! Last Wednesday Year 2 enjoyed a whole day of Japan activities as part of our Big Question this half-term. Pupils came into school in some great Japanese themed dress-up. They were raring to learn more about Japan as soon as they entered the class. A big thank you to parents for their super efforts in making the day a success. The Japanese Meerkats looked amazing!
The first aspect of Japanese life we looked at was the ancient sport of sumo wrestling. We learnt about the rules and discovered the serious ceremony around each bout that usually lasts only a minute! We went into the hall and had our own sumo tournament. We also had another fun competition based on crazy Japanese game shows.
Miss O'Reilly taught the pupils to make an origami dog. We have some super paper folders in our meerkat mob!
When we investigated Japanese life in a bit more detail, we found out that they love all things kawaii (cute). In fact, they even make the lunch in their Bento lunchboxes look super cute. We decorated some kawaii cookies as cute bunnies, kittens and bears. See our yummy kawaii skills below!
We know that many Japanese people eat a healthy diet of fish, rice and vegetables. Some of the meerkats made some sushi using these ingredients for the class to sample. The rice was very sticky and it was trickier than we thought to make it look good!
Since Japan is comprised of over 6000 islands it was not a surprise to discover that they eat a lot of fish. In fact, they have a super healthy diet which enables many Japanese people to live past 100! We tried our sushi, rice cakes, chicken ramen noodles, mochi cakes and Hello Panda biscuits. We enjoyed our Japanese feast - well, most of it!
We had a great day learning more about a very different country. We are looking forward to the rest of our Big Question lessons this term. It is a shame we cannot go on a school trip to Japan! Sayonara!
Texture Painting
In our art lesson we recreated the textures we found on our forest hunt using paint and a selection of different tools to apply it. Pupils are getting very good at mixing colours and hues from the 3 primary colours. We experimented with different tools to create our textures and there were some very creative additions to our sketch books. We have some very arty meerkats this year!
Forest School Texture Hunt!
Today we went over to Forest School for our art lesson and hunted for different textures. We discussed what 'texture' means and brainstormed different vocabulary. Our eagle eyed meerkats found lots of great texture examples. We even had time to play 'pooh sticks' and enjoy a yummy hot chocolate!. We will use the textures we found in class later this week when we mix colours and use different tools to recreate them. Thank you to Miss Thompson for joining us for a spot of forest art!
Design & Technology: Christmas Stockings!
Our D & T project this half-term was to sew and make a pouch. We designed and made Christmas stockings. We showed some super sewing skills and decorated our stockings with cut felt shapes and Christmas fabric cuttings. Our projects look amazing and are a wonderful Christmassy decoration. We hope Santa puts a present inside!
Continents Mobiles
We completed our Big Question 'Which continent would make the best home for Sunny the meerkat?' by making our continents mobiles. We researched facts about 3 different continents and wrote them neatly onto fact cards. We then made our paper plate map of the world which took some careful cutting! Our finished mobiles look amazing! Test us on our continents knowledge - we have learnt lots this term!
Christmas Party Day!
We had our KS1 Christmas party today and pupils had a super time! We began by watching Joey the magician with Monkeys, Sheep and Elephants classes - he had lots of funny tricks to show us! We then had a KS1 mix-up and enjoyed bingo, tattoos, face painting and lots of Christmas play. After lunch, we played party games and had some yummy snacks and treats in the hall. We finished the afternoon with an epic pass the parcel and a visit from Santa himself! We each received a gift for being so good in school and Santa couldn't believe how well-behaved we are!
We had a great Christmas party day! Thank you to parents, school staff and Friends of Stonebroom for our Christmas treat!
Merry Grinchmas! - Reading Buddy Treat
Well done to all of our meerkat mob for completing their reading buddy homework this term. It really has helped all of our reading! As a treat, we had a Merry Grinchmas afternoon in class on Friday. We played Grinch bingo, made plate decorations, decorated cookies, made popcorn cones and watched 'The Grinch' with our tasty snacks. It was a Grinch-tastic time!
Giant Map Work!
As part of our current Big Question about continents and oceans, we went into the hall and unrolled the huge world map. First, we identified the continents and oceans and then we tried to place different animals where we thought they would live. Lots of our meerkat mob were very good at recognising whether an animal would live in a cold or warm place. We also placed ourselves where we would like to visit and next to an animal we would love to see in the wild. We have some budding travellers and zoologists in Year 2!
Snowball Update!
Check out the pictures to see what our class elf, Snowball, has been up to this week!
A Christmas Visitor!
We have had a visitor in class since December 1st - our class elf 'Snowball'! He has been having lots of cheeky fun in Meerkats class.
Diversity Artwork!
One of our sticky words this half-term is 'diverse' and we know that this means 'difference between things'. We have been learning that embracing differences and including people from all walks of life is a great thing. People and places from all continents are really interesting and we have a lot of differences to share.
We created some diversity artwork to celebrate our differences by colouring in a flag and then making a collage of different faces.
Science: Re-using and Recycling!
Our recent science homework was to reuse something we were going to throw away and make it into something useful or fun. Lots of pupils had a go at this task and made some super things. We made bird feeders, Baby Yoda, unicorn puppets, a meerkat, rockets and some great pencil pots! We have shown what great 'Garbage Gurus' we are with our work on materials this year. Check out our fantastic re-using below...
Spotty Maths!
Our meerkat mob looked fantastic dressed in their Pudsey gear on Friday and we did some spotty maths for Children In Need. We used smarties and straws for base ten and practiced adding and subtracting tens and ones. There were some tricky arithmetic questions but the incentive of eating smarties at the end of the lesson worked wonders and we got lots of answers correct!
Reading Buddy Treat!
We had our first treat for completing our Reading Buddy homework. Every meerkat has been practicing their reading comprehension this term - well done! We had a Halloween party which was frighteningly fun! Lots of us dressed up in spooky costumes - thank you to parents for making this possible!
We played Halloween Bingo, played games, did some crafts and even had a mummy making competition! We also had some spooky snacks - Yum! Yum!
Well done meerkats. You are becoming amazing readers!
Printing The Great Fire
We completed our Big Question work today by printing a scene from the Great Fire of London. We had made our backgrounds using warm colours and collage and created a printing block of a Tudor house ready for printing. Using rollers and ink we printed our design and created some super artwork. It was a little bit messy but good fun and the results were amazing. What arty meerkats we are!
Burning Houses on the Playground!
We made little Tudor houses in class and pupils couldn't wait to burn them!
One of our Big Question learning challenges was to find out if fire spreads easier when things are close together. We made cardboard houses and did a little investigation on the playground. We arranged half of our houses tightly packed together, just like London houses were in 1666. We then arranged the other half more spread out. We set fire to one house in each arrangement and observed what happened. We quickly saw the reason the Great Fire spread so quickly back in 1666! Check out our investigation below:
Meerkat Maths!!
We have been learning our 2 times table and practicing on TT Rock Stars to improve our multiplication facts. To help with our 2's we made times table spinners and are aiming to know these facts off by heart to achieve our first maths target. Some of our marvellous mob even made a 5 times table spinner. We will soon be TT Rock Legends!
Tree of Life!
We continued looking at sculpture in our art lessons this week and explored the Tree of Life. We looked at a variety of images of 'Tree of Life' in different materials, countries and cultures. We then worked together to make a meerkat mob floor sculpture. Finally, we worked in pairs to make our own 3D tree of life picture. Check out our terrific trees!
Fun Run!
We had a lot of fun at the local Fun Run! Meerkats and Elephant classes were well behaved and showed great sportsmanship cheering each other on during their races. We placed 1st and second in the Year 2 girls race and 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the Year 2 boys race. One of our marvellous mob also received an extra award for trying so hard and having a super attitude. The ground may have been rather wet but we all had a fantastic time and we have many athletic runners in our class. Well done!
Forest School Science!
We had some fantastic October weather when we went into the forest this week! First, we enjoyed feeding the animals on our way to the log circle.
Despite the warm weather, it took Miss T a couple of tries to light our campfire. She taught us some forest fire safety and our mob showed how much they know about the Great Fire of London. We tested different materials to answer our investigation question 'Which material is best for rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666?' The pupils showed what clever scientists they are and discussed the properties of different materials. Miss Thompson was very impressed and handed out many dojos.
After our super science, we had hot chocolate with homemade biscuits around the campfire. It was delicious! Thank you Miss Thompson!
To finish off our amazing afternoon, we had time to explore and play. Pupils went in the dens, played in the mud kitchen and had a great time swinging!
Art Morning!
We had a fantastic time exploring the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat with Miss Walton. We learnt facts about his life and put these on a timeline. We then used pens, oil pastel and chalk pens to create a figure in his style. We all enjoyed our extra art lesson and knew lots about this new artist when we did our quiz.
Big thanks to Miss Walton!
Art - 3D Strips!
We continued our sculpture work by investigating different ways to make strips of paper into 3D shapes. These were glued onto card to make some very colourful and arty creations. Some of our sculptures looked like fantastic mini theme parks! We are enjoying making our 3D art!
Art - Tube Sculptures!
We have been learning about 3D art in our lessons this week. We explored how 3D tubes can be made by rolling up card to different thicknesses. We worked in pairs to make our own tube sculptures. Our rolling, cutting and gluing skills were amazing and we produced some wonderful sculptures.
Great Fire of London Pre-learning Task!
Our pre-learning task for our very first Big Question was to create a poster, leaflet or video telling the rest of the class some fire safety tips. The posters and videos we created could be used by Derbyshire Fire Service because they are eye-catching and contain lots of useful information. Our Meerkat Class are fantastic at fire safety! Check out our wonderful work. One of our mob could be presenting the One Show before he reaches secondary school! He was super clear and communicated lots of great information and even demonstrated a Stop! Drop! And Roll!
Reading Buddies!
What a super second week we are having in Meerkats class! As well as showing our wonderful number knowledge, writing super sentences and thinking about our first Big Question, we have been busy making our reading buddies to help us with our reading homework. They look great and we can't wait to complete our first homework task!
Reading Buddy homework will be set each Thursday and should be returned by the following Thursday. When pupils complete each task they will get a stamp on their Reading Buddy card. If they collect all stamps, they can join in with our end of term homework treat!
Materials Detectives!
Our new meerkat mob had a fantastic first week in Year 2 and I am very excited to be teaching such a clever bunch of pupils! In our first science lessons all of the meerkats have shown what a great deal they know about materials and their properties already! After discussing different objects and what they are made from, we put on super specs and hunted around the classroom for evidence of different materials. We found lots of things and sorted and categorised them really well. We even discussed objects made from multiple materials. What super scientists!
First Day
We have had a super first day in our new Meerkat Class! What a fantastic mob! We wrote some very impressive sentences using conjunctions and even a question mark or two.
Meet this year's Marvellous Meerkat mob!!
We had a fantastic transition morning and, as you can see, the whole mob are marvellous at drawing meerkats. A great start to Year 2!
