Gallery
3D Relief Maps!
We have been looking at maps in different forms in our art lessons this term. We made maps inspired by our journey to school in our sketchbooks and then used these as a starting point for 3D relief maps. We used different materials to create our relief artworks.
Our 'Katie Morag' Pre-Learning Task
In The Baking Day Secret the villagers of Struay make some baked treats with varying success! 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! One of our mob has proved she would make a super TV presenter too! Thank you to our helpful adults who helped us kick off our new Big Question in yummy style!
An alternative task was to create a map of your journey to school for this geography Big Question. Again, one of our meerkats impressed us by completing both tasks! We will be using our map making skills and exploring maps in our art unit this term.
Litter Picking!
Along with Year 1, we were eco-warriors this morning picking litter from around our playing field. We initially thought it was tidy already and then filled 3 bin bags with litter! A great start to our Community Week!
Planting Sunflower Seeds
This week we began our Plants unit in science by planting some sunflower seeds. Hopefully if we look after them they will grow into healthy plants that flower in the Summer. We will be keeping a diary of how they germinate and grow.
Marvellous Meerkat Chocolate Factory!
We have been learning about Grace Darling souvenirs and the class 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 evaluate their marvellous creations and hopefully they shared them too!
Reading Buddy Treat - Cooking Club
Yesterday we had an Easter Cooking Club to reward us for the super reading comprehension homework we completed this term. We were all star bakers and worked as a team to make some Easter treats. We decorated a box Easter style to take our tasty swag home. Yum! Yum!
We also made baskets to fill with Easter symbols and these will be coming home today.
Thank you to parents for supporting our reading again this half-term. Each sheet completed and reading at home really does make a difference to our fluency and comprehension. Well done, reading Meerkats!
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 souvenir chocolate boxes and plates to commemorate the event.
It's A Wrap! - Part 2
This week we carefully assembled our chosen ingredients to make our healthy wrap. 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!
Array Hunt!
Last week Meerkats Class were exercising their multiplication skills and using arrays to answer maths problems. We then 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.
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 yucky snacks. 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 have been busy writing some great instructions about making disgusting sandwiches. Don't take a look if you are feeling a bit queasy - they might make you sick!
It's a wrap!
This term our Design and Technology learning involves planning, designing, making and evaluating healthy wraps. We have been investigating food groups and healthy eating to design a lunchtime wrap and last week we chopped, snipped and grated our ingredients representing protein, dairy and fruit & vegetables. We taste tested different combinations and now have a healthy, balanced wrap recipe to make and try in groups. Check back on our class blog to find out which we liked best.
Parent Reading Workshop
Thank you to parents who came into school today to take part in our reading workshop. We did a 'fluent reading' session, tried a few VIPERS questions with Voices In The Park (a great book!) and made Thing 1 and 2 bookmarks. Hopefully a few useful tips and pointers were shared, pupils also got a free book. It was great to see parents and pupils working togather and see you all in school.
Some of the information will be sent home to those parents who couldn't make it today.
Pre-Learning Task: Lighthouse and Floating STEM task.
For our new Big Question about Grace Darling, pupils were asked to use their engineering skills and make a lighthouse or something that floats. We had some super lighthouses, even a few with working lights! We also had a fleet of boats and floating craft. One of our clever meerkats made a motorised boat using remote control car parts - excellent engineering! We borrowed the water container form Sheep class 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!
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.
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.
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:
Reading Buddy Treat
We are brilliant at completing our reading homework! All pupils completed their reading buddy comprehensions this term and they also read at least once at home too. As a reward for being committed to improving their reading, Year 2 played team games in the hall and even got to race across the apparatus. We had a fruit skewer snack break to restore our energy!
Keep practicing your reading, you are doing a great job so far this year!
David Nieper Visit
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 in pairs to make a Monster Top Trump card and fashioned a monster from salt dough. It was a busy morning! Pupils showed great teamwork in working together to achieve their goals and one of our pairs 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 staff for organising the morning and, once again, thank you to Year 2 for being a credit to the school and yourselves.
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.
We know that many Japanese people eat a healthy diet of fish, rice and vegetables. We tried some sushi snacks with varying enthusiasm!
We sampled rice cakes, chicken ramen noodles, seaweed crisps, mochi cakes, pocky and Hello Panda biscuits. We enjoyed our Japanese feast - well, most of it!
We were so busy on Japan Day, we had to complete our origami puppies later in the week. We have some super paper folders in Meerkat class! Judging by our pre-learning origami, our grown-ups could be origami masters too!
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!
Forest School Art Scavenging
This week our meerkat mob went into Forest School to become texture detectives and search for interesting colour and texture to take back to class. Despite being a wet, winter day, we did find some interesting seed pods, leaves, bark, moss and more sticks than we knew what to do with! We had a good walk all around the woods, played pooh sticks at the bridge and clever Reggie knew that Winnie the Pooh leant his name to pooh sticks, investigated the pond and even had some time to play. Thanks, Miss T, for joining us for the session.
Later in the day, we used brushes, bubble wrap, card, and a heap of other interesting materials to recreate the textures in our sketchbooks.
Times Tables Rock Stars!
We dressed up as Rock Stars on Friday and had a fun morning of times tables maths. We now have TT Rock Stars logins and began our times tables journey. We also made 2 times tables spinners to help us learn our first times table. Rock on!
Big Map!
This week we got out the giant world map, recapped our continents knowledge and discovered exactly where Japan is. Pupils used some detective work to decide where different animals can be found in the world and we also decided where on the planet we would most like to visit and why. Our geography skills are improving and we have some meerkat explorers in our class with itchy feet!
D & T - Christmas Stockings!
Over the last couple of weeks we have been busy sewing, sticking and making our Christmas stockings.
Our D & T project this half-term was to sew and make a pouch. We designed our Christmas stockings and over the last couple of weeks we have been busy elves sewing, sticking and making our 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!
Christopher's Christmas!
Year 2 visited Mansfield Museum with year 1 for a Christmassy production all about a guinea pig who saves Christmas. Pupils really enjoyed the show and joined in with the songs, action and makaton. We also found out that Rhylee knows all of the words to Jingle Bells! Pupils were well behaved travelling to the performance and being a super audience too. They made us very proud.
When we returned to class, Snowball the elf had delivered some presents from Santa. We are having lots of festive fun in our final week of term.
Merry Grinchmas Homework 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 Monday. We played Grinch bingo, made plate decorations, made popcorn cones and watched a little bit of 'The Grinch' with our tasty snacks. It was a Grinch-tastic time!
The Meerkat Snowman Workshop
Today we completed our log cookie snowmen and made a batch of yummy white chocolate melted snowmen. We have plenty to sell at the Winter Fayre this week. Thank you to parents who have pre-ordered to support our Year 2 enterprise project. We are very excited to take our crafts home!
Do you want to build a snowman?...
Our meerkat mob have been very crafty making snowmen themed Christmas treats to sell at the Winter Fayre this week. Our log cookie snowmen look great and our hanging decorations are taking shape. Tomorrow we will be chocolatiers. Don't forget to pre-order your child's products to stop some other little elf buying them!
We will post more pictures from the Santa meerkat workshop tomorrow.
Our Continents Movie!
Our Mr Pepper Continents movie has been edited and sprinkled with movie magic. Grab some popcorn and take a look as Year 2 explain how millions of years ago the continents were all one supercontinent called Pangea. They also take you on a tour of the seven continents we know today. Some of our meerkat mob are terrific performers!
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 for ones and straws for tens, showing our place value knowledge and 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!
Mr Pepper Day!
Mr Pepper came into class on Monday to help us learn about our continents and oceans Big Question. We discovered that 250 million years ago there was only one continent on Earth, Pangea. We saw some clips about how the solar system and the continents as we know them were created. We then looked at some short films showing how amazing and different each of the seven continents are. In the afternoon we created our own film about the continents - watch this space for the finished clip. We had a great day of learning!
Comparing Crocodiles!
We made some comparing crocodiles this week in our maths lessons and used them to compare numbers we created with different apparatus.
Halloween 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 some Halloween games which were frighteningly fun! We played Halloween Bingo, had a mummy making competition and went home with some treats! Yum! Yum!
Well done meerkats. You are becoming amazing readers!
Our Year 2 mob also had a lot of fun taking part in the spooky walk. We have worked very hard this half-term and enjoyed our final fun day before the break. Thank you to parents for dressing the meerkats up so spookily and for sponsoring our walk.
Printing The Great Fire.
We completed our Big Question work yesterday 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 soon saw the reason the Great Fire spread so quickly back in 1666! Check out our investigation below:
Forest School Science!
We finally had some decent October weather when we went into the forest this week! Miss Thompson and Sam had a great campfire going when we arrived in the log circle and she taught us some forest fire safety. We impressed with our knowledge of the Great Fire of London. We then 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. The fire was so hot it began to melt our metal. This has not happened before!
We went stick collecting to keep the fire going and found lots of dry, dead wood. Perfect!
To finish off our wonderful session in the forest, we had popcorn and hot chocolate around our fire. Thank you to Miss T for helping us complete our investigation. We had a great time.
Skipping Workshop!
This week we enjoyed a skipping workshop and discovered that meerkats can skip! We had some super skippers in our mob and all of the pupils improved their skipping skills. Some meerkats enjoyed it so much that they joined staff for an after school workshop too! Well done to our keenest skippers.
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 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.
Next week Derbyshire Fire Service will be visiting Year 2 and we already have lots of safety tips to share.
Reading Buddies!
What a super half-term 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 lively 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 star 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!
Meet this year's Marvelous Meerkat mob!!
We had a fantastic transition morning back in July and, as you can see, the whole mob are marvelous at drawing meerkats. A great start to Year 2!
