St John the Baptist CE VA Primary School Year Two

Over the past few weeks, Y2 have been investigating how to make moving pictures in Design and Technology. We learnt about different mechanisms and lots of new technical vocabulary.

We have made…

1.  Sliding mechanisms called sliders, where our insects move in a straight line (horizontal, vertical or diagonal).
2. Two different rotating mechanisms called
   1. Levers, where our bug moved in an arc (a curved line) by pivoting around a fixed split pin.
   2. Wheels, where more than one image can pivot on a wheel around a fixed split pin.

We are all excited to begin to design our own moving pictures to create a book, now we know how each mechanism works.

Today was the culmination of a terms work learning about and designing bread. We followed a recipe to create the basic bread dough using either strong flour or gluten free flour. After allowing the dough to prove, we individually added additional ingredients to change the flavour and texture of our bread. Then shaped our dough into intricate plaits, lattices or cones.  After 30 minutes of proving once more, we baked our bread. The children were really proud of their bread and took them home to share with their families.

In the afternoon we went to church for our carol service. Year 2 and 3 sang the Angels song from our Christmas play.

Wow, what an amazing day!  This morning, we got creative with hack saws and hand drills designing amazing Christmas tree decorations. It took us most of the morning, but I’m sure you will all agree it was time well spent. We proudly hung them on the Christmas tree for all too see, and look forward to taking them home after Christmas. A special thank you to Mrs Brown who stayed to help us.

Today we also had a special Collective Worship to remind ourselves of the meaning of the elements of the Christingles and to explain the work of the Children’s Society.

Christmas lunch was delicious and then the day got even better when we had a surprise visit from Father Christmas who brought gifts for our classroom. We jumped for joy when we saw our pirate ship, farm yard and baby doll.

In Design and Technology, we have been product testing a variety of breads from around the world. It was fantastic to see all children tasted every type of bread available and most went back for seconds. Surprisingly the classes favourites were, rosemary and olive baguette, gluten free seeded white and a tiger bread.

In D&T we have been learning to follow a recipe by ourselves to make salt dough. We had to concentrate on what we were doing and measure carefully