Penguins have become our big focus in Year 2 recently! We have loved finding out facts about emperor penguins and how they survive in the challenging Antarctic climate. We’ve looked at different non-fiction texts called non chronological reports and have planned our own. We are looking forward to making our own books about the emperor penguin.

We’ve been continuing to measure with metres and centimeters and have had a go at some challenging word problems too. 

You might want to explore measuring at home, can you find things which are bigger than 1m and less than 1m. Or you could explore the length of these lines using the ruler in this game. 

We’ve been thinking about spirals we can see in nature. We were amazed at how many spirals we could see in the images we looked at. From tiny snail shells to huge elephant’s trunks and small chameleon’s tails. We enjoyed sketching and shading an elephant’s trunk from a photograph and imagined it kept spiralling and spiralling.

We’re getting the measure of things this week in maths! We’ve been using metre sticks, trundle wheels and rulers to help us measure in metres (m) and centi-meters (cm).

It has been fun measuring different things we have in school from our pencils to the playground! We’ve talked about the importance of how to start measuring. Have a look at this challenge together. Is the crayon 8cm long? 

We enjoyed a virtual visit from Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service. The children enjoyed learning about all of the different jobs that firefighters do and also talked about how to keep safe at home. The children learnt how many smoke alarms houses should have and how often they should be tested.

Follow this link for information for adults about smoke alarms: https://www.dwfire.org.uk/safety/safety-at-home/smoke-alarms/ 

And how to plan an escape in the event of an emergency: https://www.dwfire.org.uk/safety/safety-at-home/plan-your-escape/ 

Outdoors, we have been thinking about nature. In art we discussed where we can see circles in nature – from animals to food, plants and parts of the world and even other planets too! We’ve been exploring our local environment to see where we can spot circles/round shapes. We found lots: from the pond, to the frogspawn (yes,frogspawn in January!), to the ripples in the water and plants and logs all around us! 

Our class has been loving learning about the polar regions and we’ve taken a particular shine to penguins and Antarctica! We are learning how information texts (non chronological reports) can be written by looking at examples and finding features. We can’t get enough of penguins right now and are looking forward to writing our own reports about them soon. 

We can’t believe it is already week 2 into our new half term! We have had an action packed week full of some amazing learning and making the most of the sunshine, even though it has seemed to feel a little bit chillier!

In literacy we have continued to explore our new text Lila and the Secret of Rain, we had lots of fun using pictures on a story map to help us to record the different events that took place in the story.

We then began to use these to help us retell the story. The text has also helped us to think about the weather in Kenya and how this is different to the weather we see in the UK. In the story, Lila was upset that it had not been raining as it meant her crops could not grow which helped us to explore why we need the rain for lots of different reasons. 

Thank you to those who had a go at the division questions on MyMaths, I have been really impressed with our mathematical skills in division this past week. We have been looking at dividing by 2, 5 and 10 and using different strategies such as grouping to help us solve these equations. We have also started looking at the inverse of division and using our times table facts to help us. 

We’ve also discussed how knowing one number fact, can help us with others. For example:

On Tuesday, we investigated and looked for where we could see circles within nature. It was really interesting to see that there are lots of circles within nature all around us. Here are some of them: 

What other examples can you think of or find?
We looked closely at peacock feathers and spent some time drawing these. We focused on using our pencils to create different shades and tones to highlight the light and dark within these feathers. 

Happy New Year! We hope that you were able to have a happy and restful holiday; it has been lovely to see you all again this week.

We have started to look at the concept of division in Maths and used manipulatives to practise sharing things into equal groups. You might want to have a go at sharing some items at home, such as pasta or toys, into equal groups using the 2, 5 and 10 times table. We’re setting some home learning for mymaths to practise some division challenges. Well done to those of you who had a go at the optional task over the Christmas break.

You may like to play an online division game to help practise dividing: https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/doggyDivision/index.html 

We have also started our new Literacy text – Lila and the Secret of Rain. We have enjoyed reading this traditional tale and have talked about how it is similar/different to the traditional tales we read earlier this year.

You may enjoy listening to the story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04gRXlPnEeo or you could mute/pause the video to read it yourselves. 

We’ve been enjoying using a book called an Atlas to learn about the world. Combined with Google Earth, we have been revising the continents of the world and learning about certain countries.

We have enjoyed learning about how many different countries there are in Africa and liked using maps to find out where countries like Kenya are from. We have looked at different artefacts from some countries around the world. We really enjoyed looking at how some people use recycled materials to make toys, instruments or ornaments/jewelry.