Meadow 2

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 

The children have had another fun week in school. In Geography they have continued to enjoy learning about the polar regions, this week’s focus was ‘Who lives in the Polar Regions?’ The children learnt about the indigenous lives of the Innuits, and how they are able to travel and live in such a cold environment. We learnt about how igloos are built from snow that has fallen quickly and blown into a drift. We even had a go at making our own igloos from sugar cubes and marshmallows – we quickly learnt that igloo building is not easy!

In Literacy we have found out more about the characters in our class book ‘The Journey Home’ and the problems that the elephant, polar bear, panda and orangutan face in their habitats. We then created a wanted poster to try and catch the poachers or the woodcutters who are endangering the animals. 

Maths this week has seen us applying our knowledge of multiplication facts and solving word problems too. We are working hard on the recall of our times table facts and look forward to showing you how we do this in our ‘Stay and…’ soon.

We have been continuing our work on multiplication, we have now been working on the 5 x table and making arrays. You might find this website useful for practising multiplication at home.

We have also been enjoying our Literacy text,The Journey Home. We have enjoyed lots of role play linked with the story and also thinking about what the animals might hope for as the story progresses.

In music we have been listening to pieces of music and moving to the beat. We have also loved singing the Grandma Rap – ask us to sing it to you! 

In our topic work we have been continuing to look at the Polar Regions, we have been comparing the Arctic and Antarctic regions and thinking about how they are similar and different. We have also been looking at adaptations in science and researching how animals are suited to live in their habitat. Did you know that reindeer have fur on the bottom of their hooves to stop them slipping on the ice?

Today the children have shared what they know about bridges and also looked at some bridges around the world. In groups, the children enjoyed junk modelling and creating their own bridge designs!

The children had a great time drumming this week – they enjoyed creating different rhythms with their drums and also singing a celebratory fishing song, Kuku, from Africa.

We’ve loved welcoming the children into Meadow 2 and getting to know them. Here’s a few things we’ve been learning together over the last couple of weeks: We’ve been revising how to read, write and partition 2 digit numbers. Here’s a fun game to practice your knowledge and skills: https://firstlook.educationcity.com/content/Activity/index/25734

We have also enjoyed learning about Kenya and looking at Kenyan artefacts. We are excited to create our own Kenyan inspired art soon!