What have we been learning about in Year 2?
There’s been some fantastic learning happening in class recently. We wanted to share some of it with you…
Reading: learning to use a dictionary!
We’ve recently been exploring a poem called The Three Little Kittens by Eliza Lee Follen in our reading lessons – you may have seen this on our homework sheet! There were some new vocabulary words that we weren’t sure about, so we used a dictionary to help us learn the definitions of sigh, fear and soil. We know that dictionaries can help us spell words and look up meanings of words we are curious about. We use our knowledge of the alphabet when looking for words in dictionaries.
Maths: doubling numbers!
We’ve been making fantastic progress with our multiplication and division learning in Maths. We’ve recently learned to multiply and divide by 2. Our knowledge of the 2x tables helps us with doubling numbers. We used Numicon and mirrors to help us with our doubling learning!
Computer Coding
Today, the children explored a digital game called Scratch. They created a sprite (a 2D character) and used the coding blocks to form an algorithm. The children enjoyed creating, coding and testing their ideas.
What is Scratch programming?
Scratch is a programme aimed at supporting children developing their coding and programming skills. It can be used to create stories, games and animations. Scratch promotes computational thinking and problem solving skills.
Have a go at home – it’s free!
Zooming Julia Donaldson
To kick off world book day, we enjoyed a zoom with Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. We enjoyed a story about a hare and a hedgehog who were in a running race. Axel Scheffler showed us how he draws the characters. Julia Donaldson then read us a new story about some baddies. The children were gripped!
Food Technology
This week, we have made some overnight oats.
We washed our hands before we started to wash away any germs. We read the recipe and worked together in pairs to follow the method. We used a claw grip to keep us safe when cutting the banana with a knife.
After, we evaluated our oats saying what we enjoyed and what we’d improve if we made them again.
If you make this at home, please email some pictures to share with us.
Working Scientifically… and investigating nappies!
This half term, we will be working scientifically using our 5 enquiry types.
This week, we observed nappies to help us with our investigation. We thought about the properties of a nappy and what it’s function is. The children had some great ideas and many recognised a nappy need to be soft to protect the skin, stretchy and it needs to absorb liquid.
Check out the key vocabulary for our new topic and help at home by discussing these words with your child. 
All aboard for a new term
I hope you all had a fantastic half term break and are ready to enjoy our new topic ‘let’s go’. This week our focus story was ‘The train ride’ we had lots of different transport activities in our provision areas. We really enjoyed learning more about what trains were like long ago and what they are like today.
We are very excited as we think we have started to spot the first signs of Spring. We have been looking carefully on our journeys and Arthur painted a beautiful daffodil that he had seen on his way to school.
We have been using our phonics skills to build words and sentences. We really enjoyed finding the sound balls and making a word.
Poetry Picnic
We have been popping crazy with our poem this week. We hope you enjoy it too.
On Thursday 2 March it is World Book Day. This year we are not dressing up however we would like invite all families into class to share a story together. Please could you bring a favourite story and teddy with you on Thursday morning.
Mrs Payne
Jaspers beanstalk
This week in nursery our focus book has been Jaspers Beanstalk. The children really enjoyed listening and joining in with the story.
‘he isn’t happy his bean hasn’t grown’
‘he needs to get all the slugs off so that it doesn’t get eaten’
‘he wants to climb the beanstalk to go find a giant like Jack did’
We planted our own beans to what them grow!
We started to explore what we might need to help seeds grow…
‘we need some mud to put the seed in’
‘ the water helps make it grow’
Polite notice
Next week we will be drawing our faces. If you could bring in a photo of your child when they were a baby so we can compare how we have changed!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Ward
Living and Learning: I recognise emotions in myself and others
This week in Living and Learning, we were looking at recognising emotions in myself and others.
We started with 6 words: kind, unkind, fair, unfair, right, and wrong. We heard different scenarios and moved to the word we felt summed up the scenario. Often, we could have gone to more than one word or children thought differently about the different people in the scenario.
We read the story ‘Have you filled a bucket today?’ We heard how we could fill someone else’s bucket with the actions we do and the words that we say. We created our own bucket thinking about what we can do to help fill someone else’s bucket.
Help at home: encourage your child to think about their emotions and to label how they are feeling. See if they can fill your bucket or another family member’s bucket with their actions or words.
Homophones hunt!
This week, we have been learning about homophones in Grammar. These are words which sound the same, but have different meanings and spellings.
For example: see and sea, sun and son, flower and flour.
We had to make homophone pairs by finding someone else with a different word that sounds the same as ours. We learned that some homophones are not pairs of words, but come in triplets!
For example: two, too and to, their, there and they’re.
Week 6 – People who help us
It’s hard to believe we are at the end of another busy half term! There has been so much great learning in Reception so thank you to everyone for working so hard!
This week we have been thinking about different jobs and different ways that people help us. We discovered that there are so many different ways to help others! Mr Atkins helped us to develop our building skills and we designed emergency vehicles and uniform for the emergency services.
We had a visit from Wetherby Fire Station on Thursday. It was amazing to see the fire engine and to learn more about what equipment they use and the different jobs the firefighters do.
On Tuesday it was Internet Safety Day. During the day we learnt different ways that we could stay safe online. We read a book called ‘Penguin Pig’ Which helped us to understand that not everything you see and read online is real. We then created our own made up animals so others could see not everything is real.
We love learning new poems and nursery rhymes during our daily poetry picnic sessions. This week we worked in small groups to create our poetry performances.
I hope you are all having a wonderful half term and look forward to seeing you all on Monday 20 February!