St John the Baptist CE VA Primary School Year Two

Its Feeling Good Week ! The children have enjoyed taking part in a range of mindfulness activities to support their wellbeing including yoga, a ‘taking a pencil for a walk’ activity, fruit kebab making, making bath bombs, clay sculpting and much more.

It’s Sports Week ! And the children have been participating a jam-packed week of exciting, sport.  They have learnt round housing and jab punching techniques in kick boxing,  meditated using the Satnam chant ‘Sa Ta Na Ma’ in yoga, competed in novelty and running races for their sports day and ran their Golden mile ! And there is still lots more, ask your child about their favourite sport this week.

This week the children have been planting their seedlings from our science topic last term.  Our outside area of class 2 has been transformed into a lovely bed of growing vegetables and the class have been keeping an eye on how their plants are doing in the heat and making sure they are watered well. 

In Art, we are using clay to sculpt portraits of Henry VIII or one of his wives.  The children have looked closely at the facial features from portraits of the King or one of his wives and have carefully created the detail using different clay tools.

In Science, we are learning about growing plants.   We have been looking at what plants grow from and what makes them grow healthily.  This week, we have planted seeds and we will record how tall they will grow over the next few weeks…

Today, the children enjoyed using paint to create their self-portraits.  They thought about the paint colours they would use to reflect their feelings.

On Friday 30^th April, Year 1 and 2 took part in the National Daily Mile Event.  The classes enjoyed walking or jogging around the school field with their friends boosting their fitness levels.

This week, Year 2 have been using the iPads to explore the internet safely to find out information about Henry VIII.  They originally thought of a main question to ask about Henry VIII.  Then working in pairs, they used the Purple Mash software to create mind maps to add their information.

This week, Year 2 enjoyed having the opportunity to have a ‘Christmas Experience’ in the churchyard of St John the Baptist.  The children dressed up for the occasion and they hung up good news prayers on the trees surrounding the church.  Reverend Sarah spoke to the children about the nativity story and asked them to place a candle near the church entrance and it was a beautiful sight to see.

In Maths this week, Year 2 have been identifying the relationships between numbers.  Using Cuisenaire rods, they were identifying the whole and the parts and recorded their findings using bar models.

In English this term, Year 2 are learning about traditional tales such as Rapunzel, The Three Little Pigs and their alternative stories.

This week the children have been learning how to extend their sentences by using conjunctions and making sure they use the correct punctuation in their writing.

Today Year 2 took part in a Skip2bfit workshop.  They learnt how to improve their skipping skills, why it is important to exercise and what happens to their bodies when they exercise.

After keeping score from their first skip, the children were then asked to skip again to beat their first score. The children competed against themselves trying to improve on their score and all of them did !

They learnt an important lesson about having a Growth mindset, if you want to do something, you can ! This can be applied to anything even your classwork.

After skipping the children were told that as well as being active they also need to eat healthily and were given some delicious blueberries to eat.  The children had so much fun taking part in the workshop and learnt some important skills along the way too. 

In our computing sessions this term, we are continuing with working with Scratch and learning how to write coding.  This week we are looking at how to record algorithms accurately.  The children imagined they were tidying the toys away in a bedroom by working out what set of instructions they needed to get to a toy from the bedroom doorway and place it in the toy box.

In art, we have been learning about papier mâché.  Using the paper strips method the children have been working on making a toy robot for our topic.  The children dipped strips of paper in a mixture of glue and water and applied it to their structure and ensured they smoothed their strips out.  Ask your child what papier mâché means.

In our art sessions, we have been learning about different types of paper and have been experimenting with collaging this week.  The children cut up pieces of tissue paper and arranged and overlapped them on a template. They learnt how to ensure their template was covered completely by the tissue paper and spread evenly.

Our value this half term is thankfulness and in our class we have been thinking about what we are thankful for.  At home, please take time to think and discuss what you are thankful for.

In Maths this week, the Year 2 children enjoyed playing a game that involved regrouping a ten for ten ones using the context of money.  The children worked in pairs and took turns to roll a dice and then they took away that amount from the coins they had.  They had to remember to exchange their 10p coins with ten 1ps in order to take away the exact amount they had rolled on their dice.  The first of the pair to make zero won the game.

This week the Hertford and Ware School Sports Partnership came to visit St John’s and they arranged a variety of sporting activities for all of the children to participate in.  The Year 2 children had the opportunity to play Boccia and archery which they really enjoyed doing.

In computing this week, the children have enjoyed learning how to play a scratch game called ‘The Addition Game’.  They are learning how to be game testers in our computing topic and they wrote down some of their ideas of how to improve the game they played.

We have some lovely postcards from the children telling us about their magical moments during the six weeks holiday.  We have read them out in class and put them up on display in our classroom.  Thank you for sending them to us.

In our athletics session this week, the children have been learning about how to improve their running technique .  Can you find out about why they need to squash tomatoes and chop onions ?