St John the Baptist CE VA Primary School Year Two

Year 2 have been looking at how the Chinese celebrate their New Year. If your child was born in 2011, then their year is the Year of the Rabbit along with Queen Victoria, David Beckham, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. They are known to be a symbol of hope and peace, rabbits are compassionate and modest, with a good sense of humour. They’ll do anything to escape from a dull life! If they were born in 2012, then their year is the Year of the Dragon and share this with Bruce Lee, Rihanna and Florence Nightingale. Their traits are ambitious, energetic and intellectual, dragons are romantic and strive for perfection, but they can also be impatient! Mrs Carroll-Lane was born in the Year of the Horse. Can you guess which year that was?

The Year 2’s have been braving the cold for another fun packed tennis lesson with Andy and Ben from Legends Tennis Club! This week they focused on ball control skills. The children are thoroughly enjoying the experience.

“Tennis is one of my favourite sports.” (Henry)

“I haven’t tried tennis before and I’m happy to be doing it now.” (Noah)

“It was cold in the beginning but it’s a lot of fun and I did warm up in the end.” (Skyla)

What a wonderful start to the new year! The children have come back full of enthusiasm and eager to learn. We have been having informative conversations about taking photograph and planting seeds and bulbs. Well done everybody and keep up the good work!

The Year 2s have been very busy over the past few weeks rehearsing for their Christmas Production of ‘A Midwife Crisis’, (and didn’t they do well!) yet they still found time to make Christmas decorations for our Christmas Tree. We are very grateful to Van Hages for donation a beautiful tree to the school. It is situated in the lobby by the school office. If you have time, please pop in and see not only our contribution to the decorations but every year group also made something.

We made ours by mixing salt, flour and water to make a salt dough and kneading all the ingredients. We used pastry cutters to cut out the shapes and a straw to make the whole. We had to let the dough dry out completely before we could paint them. We think they have been a great success.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Looking forward to seeing you all again after the holidays!

Class 2 have really enjoyed their Great Fire of London topic. The children have put a lot of effort and enthusiasm into their given activities, in particular, the houses they made to represent how London might have looked during the beginning of September 1666. On Tuesday afternoon on the 4^th of December Year 2 opened their doors and invited the rest of the school to show their exhibition. Some of the children in the other classes tried to trick Year 2 and asked questions about their topic. However, the children in Year 2 were able to answer all the questions correctly.

Later on, most of the parents and carers of Year 2 came to see the exhibition and were delighted to see how hard their children had worked and on how many facts they had remembered.

Some parents left messages on their thoughts of the exhibition:

“Very creative ideas”.

“…how excited the children were to show us”.

“Amazing display that has brought The Great Fire of London to life”!

“A lot of hard work by all the pupils”.

“…really enjoyed this topic”.

Thank you all for your positive feedback. There will be other opportunities to visit the classroom and see the work the children have done throughout the academic year. I will try to give as much notice as possible so you can book time off work if necessary.

On Monday 1^st of October 2018, Class 2 were invited to participate in a KS 1 Athletic Skills morning at Wodson Park. The children were given the opportunity to try out lots of different skills. These included running, jumping, throwing, skipping and balancing to name just a few. Ten other schools were participating at the same time as us so there was a lot going on. Class 2 had a really good time, giving 100% to all activities and listened well to instructions. The children showed how awesome Ambassadors they were to our school through their impeccable behaviour. A great time was had by all.