Meadow 2

It has been wonderful to welcome everyone back this week. Our new big question is ‘Is our local area bee-friendly?’ There are lots of lovely ideas in our home learning leaflet for you to explore this topic further. In geography, we thought about how to locate our school on our map and its place in the wider area. We learned that our local sea is the English Channel and we also identified the three other seas that surround the UK. In literacy, we have started learning the Owl and the Pussycat and in maths we have been learning all about 3D shapes – their names and how to describe and classify them. 

On Thursday, we loved taking part in a cricket workshop provided by Time to Shine. The children were absolutely brilliant and demonstrated fantastic focus and skills. 

The children are enjoying developing their joined (continuous cursive) handwriting. If you would like to see the four different joins and additional support, please click here. 

Don’t forget to keep practising telling the time at home ready for when we start looking at in maths later in the summer. Here are some games you may find useful:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zhk82hv

https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/hickoryDickory/index.html

Meadow 2 had a wonderful time at Shire Hall. We found out about the Great Fire of Dorchester, how it started and also how it was put out. We enjoyed seeing the building where the fire started, it used to be a candle maker’s shop. Candles were made of tallow (animal fat), reeds or beeswax at the time of the fire. We also looked at maps to compare how Dorchester then and now. There were no schools and hospitals but we could see the Guild hall (Shire Hall now) and also a number of churches and a prison.

We also had a go at making peg dolls, a popular toy in Victorian times.

Asl us what we know about the Great Fire of Dorchester or the Great Fire of London, we are experts!

This week, we have continued to enjoy all our learning about the Great Fire of London. We looked at lots of different sources of evidence about the fire and considered what each one told us. If you’d like to explore these more, have a look at this website: https://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/browse-the-collection/.

We have begun to learn about measuring length in maths. We measured lengths of string and made our own string people!

In PE, we’ve continued to work on developing our fitness and skipping skills. We learned how to complete circuits using different ways of moving, such as heel kicks, tuck jumps and lunges. In spelling, we have been consolidating all the different spelling rules we have been learning this term. Ask your child if they can explain some of these rules and write some examples.

It was great to see so many fantastic costumes for our Vocabulary Parade, well done Meadow 2!

We would like you and your child to take part in the Big Plastic Count 2024 from Monday 11th in the morning to Sunday 17th March in the evening.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0nQHO7Mw-k

In 2022, nearly 250,000 people from schools, households and communities across the country made The Big Plastic Count the biggest ever investigation into UK household plastic waste. It showed that nearly 100 billion pieces of plastic are thrown away in the UK each year, with hardly any of it recycled. 

The rest is burned, sent abroad or ends up in landfill. We can’t recycle our way out of the plastic waste crisis

By joining thousands of people across the country and counting all the plastic you throw away for a week, you can gather the vital evidence needed to convince UK ministers, supermarkets and big brands to lead the way at the global talks that could finally phase out plastic production for good.  

It’s easy!  count as you throw! 

Simply mark every piece of plastic package as you throw it away in your bin or recycling on the Let’s Count Tally Sheet 

TOP TIPS

1.       Put the Let’s Count Tally Sheet up on your fridge, or near your bin or recycling. 

2.       Tell everyone you live with that you’re going to be taking part and ask them to include their plastic waste in the count too. 

3.       Using the Let’s Count Tally Sheet, record the different types of household plastic packaging waste you use for one week. This includes plastic going in your bin and plastic you put out for recycling.

4.       Use the Plastic ID Tool to look up plastic items if you need to.

5.       Remember to write down any piece of plastic packaging you use while out and about, then mark it on your tally sheet when you get back home.

Record your results online by 31st March using your class unique link https://thebigplasticcount.com/submit/2955/meadow-2. The platform will be able to work out each class plastic carbon footprint as well as our schools. 

Prizes to be won for the top three classes that have the most children that record their results. 

Good Luck! 

In PE this week, the children enjoyed using skipping ropes to play different skipping games. We will continue with these games and learning to skip next week.

The children have enjoyed thinking about how London would have been in the past, compared with how London is now. They agreed that both London in the past and present day London would have been busy but that the modes of transport are very different. The children spent a lot of time discussing which adjectives would be most appropriate to describe London, past and present, before writing a poster to promote London tourism. In topic, the children have started to answer some of the questions they generated last week and to find out about how the fire of London spread and why it spread so quickly. There is a game that some of them have enjoyed playing too – https://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/game/ 

In our maths, the children have continued to learn about division using the language grouping and sharing, you might like to have a look at this game at home. https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/doggyDivision/index.html 

A quick reminder about World Book Day next week, we are looking forward to seeing the children’s outfits.

We hope that you all had a lovely half term break. 

In maths, we have started to look at division by sharing and division by grouping. We will be focusing on this over the next couple of weeks so practising times tables at home will really help with this. Please see earlier blog posts for suitable maths games, we will also be setting this for homework too.

We are excited to have started our new topic ‘The Great Fire of London’. The children really enjoyed being detectives and piecing together the evidence which appeared in the classroom to work out what the new topic is. The children had lots of questions about the Fire of London and we hope to find out the answers to these in our work this term.

This week’s science work saw us matching baby animals to their grown ups and generated lots of discussion about which animal babies look like their adult. We are hoping to visit the pond and look for frogspawn when the weather is more conducive.

Finally, thank you for all the book cover entries that the children have been giving in, they look amazing. Don’t forget their are other prizes up for grabs – see the poster below.

We had great fun playing maths games for number day – this one was a great hit in Meadow 2: https://www.timestables.co.uk/times-table-duck.html

Thank you to everyone that came to ‘Stay and Multiply’. The children really enjoyed sharing the multiplication games with you. There are lots of ways to make times table learning fun and ‘sticky’. We played a range of games including: multiplication bingo, a multiplication muddle board game, times table wheels and also looked and commutativity using peg boards and cubes.

There are also some fun online games which children might like to play at home in addition to TT Rockstars and Numbots, these include: 

Mental Maths Train 

Multiplication Mage

Colour Sprint 

Times Table Duck

Multiplication Arrays (commutativity) 

Visitor:

Earlier this week Year 2 spoke to a virtual visitor, Professor Scourse. The children enjoyed finding out about the work of researchers in Antarctica but also what it was like to travel to and visit Antarctica too. Linked with this, the children have also designed posters encouraging people to think about how they can save the polar regions.

In Literacy, the children have enjoyed writing their own version of the story ‘The Journey Home’. The story has a powerful message about endangered animals and the impact that human activity has on the environment. You might want to share the story with your child at home.

Today, is National Safer Internet Day. The children have spent time discussing how to stay safe online. The main focus of our learning has been the importance of talking to a trusted grown-up if the children come across anything they don’t like or are unsure of online. Ask your child at home about what they can remember about our discussion and for any further information or guidance about staying safe online or Safer Internet Day please visit https://www.saferinternetday.org