This week in DT we have been making dips. In Bears we made tzatziki and in Giraffes we made hummus. We practised many skills including peeling, chopping, crushing, ripping, mixing and eating! We loved making dips and having ownership over our very own dip!

Firstly, we discussed how to follow a recipe and we read through the instructions. After this, we discussed how healthy our dips are and where the ingredients belonged on the eat well plate that we have discussed in previous weeks.

In Bears we peeled and chopped cucumbers.

Next we squeezed the limes.

After this, we crushed the garlic using a garlic crusher.

Finally, we added a pinch of salt and mixed it altogether. We especially enjoyed dipping our pitta into our delicious dips!

How to help at home:

• Design your own recipe.
• Create your own healthy dinner.
• Help peel, chop and mix at home while cooking.

Have a wonderful break; we can’t wait to welcome you back on April 22nd.

This week we learnt about the spring festival Holi. This is a Hindu festival that celebrates colour! Holi is all about good overpowering evil. In the Holi story we learnt that Prahlad faced several challenges due to not wanting to follow the evil king. Instead, he prayed to Vishnu and he was saved.

First we recreated the story where we took turns to be the evil king, Prahlad, snakes, elephants and his Aunty. We then learnt that good won over evil and this is why Hindus celebrate Holi.

After this, we went outside and used powder paint to create beautiful works of art! We were so mesmerised by the beautiful colours and our mood was lifted. We all felt like we were being celebrated and valued. Have a look at our wonderful artwork…

How to help at home:

– Make your own Holi art.

– Why is spring special to you?

– Go on a spring hunt and find out what signs of spring are in your local area.

On Thursday this week, our Year 2 children took an adventure to the RAF museum to support their current learning on the history of aviation.  We began our journey through the sky by exploring the different Hangers and worked on some activities alongside our peers. There were some exciting monoplanes, biplanes and we found our first ever triplane! We were very excited by the badges from aviators before and the giant Lancaster Bomber monoplane! Then, we ventured to a workshop and used our learning about science and materials to uncover what the first plane was made of. We were surprised to learn it was made of fabric and wood. What a fun-packed day we had!

Take a look at our amazing photos from today:

How to help at home:

• What can you find out about the history of aviation?
• We spotted a triplane! What can you find out about them?
• Ask your child to record a diary of their trip.

This week in Year 2 we have been busy completing an investigation all about height. Mrs Ineson held an assembly telling the whole school how we are going to be scientists this week. She discussed with us how we are all going to be part of a whole school experiment.

The question we needed to answer was…

“ What is the average height of a Year 2 child? “

It was up to us to decide how we were going to investigate this. As a year group we decided that we were going to measure each child with a tape measure on the playground and then divide the scores by the number of pupils to work out the average.

We found out that the average height of a Year 2 child is… 122cm. We cannot wait to announce our findings in celebration assembly.

How to help at home:

-Find out what the average height of your family is.

-Record  your results in a scientific table.

-Explain what you found out.

Here are some pictures of our investigation:

Today has been World Book Day and at Merry Hill a love of reading is at the core of everything we do, so today was especially exciting for us. We began the day with our parents visiting us for a morning read, what fun it was sharing some of our favourite books with our parents!

Then, we headed into World Book Day assembly and were introduced to the whole schools focus book: Here We Are, by Oliver Jeffers. The teachers shared the text with us, telling us the story!

After that we had a day packed with Here We Are activities where we dived into the world of Oliver Jeffers. Our activities covered a range of topics including PSHE, Science, Literacy and Art in our learning.

In Literacy, we learnt even more about Oliver Jeffers by being enquirers. Our surprise teacher was Miss Stringer and she placed clues around the room for us to uncover some interesting facts about Oliver Jeffers. Using those facts we completed a fact file booklet all about the author. It was so exciting to find out more about him, for example he wrote the book Here We Are because he was inspired by his son! Take a look at some of our learning below:

In PSHE with Miss Finch, we played the swap game where we had to swap places with a friend if they had a similar opinion, interest or idea. Then we watched a video about how animals are adapting to our world due to climate change. At Merry Hill, we follow the golden rules so, we made our own golden rules for how to look after earth. We came up with lots of ideas.

In Science with Miss Honnor, we learnt about endangered animals. We found out what the words ‘species’ and ‘endangered’ mean and talked about when an animal is classified as endangered. We thought about some of the different reasons why animals might be endangered. We learnt that habitat loss can endanger animals and that it can happen naturally, such as from wildfires and volcanic eruptions. We also thought about the effects humans can have on habitat loss when they cut down trees to make space for roads, homes and new towns. We found out that siberian tigers are endangered and that orangutans, hawksbill turtles and bumble bees are critically endangered. We then went up to the forest to make habitats for some of these animals that we had learned about.

In Art with Miss Bates, we talked about planets in our solar system and made art for a new display in the dining hall. We took inspiration from Oliver Jeffers’ book ‘Here We Are’ to show our place in the solar system. We talked about all the different stars you can find in space: shooting stars, comets, black holes and practiced drawing them on our whiteboards. We have also been drawing and colouring, showing off our cutting skills and mixing chalks and different powder paints to imitate Oliver Jeffers’s art.

Over the last few weeks in English we have been learning about fantasy texts. We learnt the story ‘My Garden’ using a story map and actions to help us, and of course remembered to practise telling it with expression.

Once we knew the story really well we looked at a written version of the text and identified the features that were included in the story. We found alliteration, similes and different sentence types.

We sorted some of the sentences from the story into the different sentence types to help us remember them.

This week we have been working in our classes to innovate ‘My Garden’ using our school as a stimulus. We worked hard to make sure we included all the features and practised telling it out loud. Finally we were ready to write down our new story. Take a look at some of our super work.

WORLD BOOK DAY REMINDER:

It is World Book Day on the 6th March. We will be looking at the text ‘ Here we are’ and we will be completing several activities throughout the day based on this exciting text. Between 8.45-9.15 we are inviting parents and guardians to come in and read with their child to celebrate and promote reading for pleasure. If you can make it into Bear class and Giraffe class to hear your child read we would greatly appreciate it!

How to help at home 

• Identify where fantasy has been used in other stories you read.
• Hunt for the different sentences types used in texts you read, alliteration and similes.
• Talk about ideas for a new fantasy story. What setting could you use?
• Keep going with the weekly handwriting homework, it really does help your writing.

For the last two weeks, year two have been working really hard learning how to write explanation texts in English. An explanation text is a piece of writing that explains how to do something.

We began our unit of learning like every other English unit, with a cold task. This is when we complete a task at the beginning of the unit, that will then be compared to the end of unit hot task to measure the progress we have all made in our understanding of writing an explanation text. We were given freedom on what to write about for this and our teachers were very impressed that we retained some important knowledge from previous learning, for example time words and use of headings.

Take a look:

Then, we began learning our class text: How to be a Teacher! We all found this text particularly amusing, for example the sentence “They live in a school and survive on coffee and biscuits.” gave us the giggles. When learning the text, we focused on some key skills our teachers assessed from our cold task that we needed some support in: subordinating conjunctions, present tense verbs and using our comprehension skills.

Take a look at some of the work we have achieved so far:

Finally, we are now beginning our independent task where we will apply some key features to our own explanation texts. The new text in Bears is called “How to be a Clown”. We answered questions such as ” Why unicycles and red noses?”.  We explained how clowns cannot survive without laughter and wigs.

How to help at home:

• Play ‘Spot the conjunction’ when reading a non-fiction text. We have been looking at subordinating conjunctions, i.e. because, when, if, that.
• What is a verb? Can your child tell you the present tense and past tense of a verb, for example: I run –>  I ran.

This week in Year 2, we have been looking at money. We have focussed on making different combinations of the same amount. To do this, we used our prior learning of our part-whole models and physical money to show how an amount can be made in different ways. We learnt a key sentence this week which has been repeated often: there are 100 pennies in £1. 

Then, we have been solving one step money problems. We have been using lots of different strategies to help us, including drawing different workings out. For example, part-part-wholes, drawing tens and ones and different number sentence workings out. We also had to use our knowledge of inverse to use addition to help us with our subtraction questions, for example to find out £65- £43 we can count on to find the difference.

Lastly, we moved on to two-step money problems. We have been using the key sentence: I will use what  I know to help me. We thought about the different vocabulary in the questions and used what we knew to work out which operation we needed to use.  Then we had to show our working in different ways, using different strategies for example using our nearest multiple of 10 or counting on to subtract.

How to help at home 

• Give your child a budget to spend in a shop, can they get two things for a certain amount of money?
• Explore and become familiar with the different maths vocabulary – see the post on Seesaw about all the different words used for different operations.
• Help your child understand how many pennies in £1 or £2 with real money.

Over the last 3 weeks in English we have been learning to write stories. We started by learning a story called The Great Kapok Tree off by heart. We used a story map and made up our own actions to help us.

We thought it was a great story and really enjoyed listening to it and retelling it. We decided it was a great story because it had an exciting ‘unfortunately’ section and were very pleased to see that there was a ‘luckily’ that followed to make everything turn out well! We also noticed that some of the nouns in the story had adjectives to describe them. We learnt that these are called expanded noun phrases.

the squawking birds

the howling monkeys

the smaller man

Once we had learned The Great Kapok Tree off by heart and identified the story features,  we then worked together in our classes to change the unfortunately, luckily and ending of the story.

This week we moved on to the independent phase of our story writing. This meant we could use our own wonderful ideas to make up our own stories. We drew our story plans, then enjoyed sharing our stories with our friends. We know that the more we practise what we want to write the easier it makes our writing so we made sure to tell our story to as many people as we could!

We worked really hard when writing our stories and we are feeling very proud of our efforts.

How to support at home 

• Use story language in every day situations e.g. unfortunately the shop had ran out of bread. Luckily they had rolls instead.
• Identify the ‘unfortunately’ and ‘luckily’ when sharing stories together.
• Help your child to hunt for interesting adjectives in reading books. Write them down so you can remember them.
• Encourage your child to write for a purpose e.g. birthday card, shopping list, note for a family member.

This term in Art we are studying Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist known for her artwork with sculpture and bright colour.

We have been learning some key skills a clay sculptor must know. First, we were given the clay tools, a rolling pin and a word mat with different techniques to manipulate clay. For example, squish, slice, pinch and press, scratching, blending. Take a look at some of us below:

After that, we had some time to experiment with the techniques.  Take a look at one of Yayoi Kusama’s amazing sculptures below:

Next, we had to apply some of the techniques we had been learning. We had to mould the clay into the correct pumpkin shape. Then, we had to attach the stalk of the pumpkin. We used the score, slip and blend technique to attach the stalk correctly. Finally, we could then add our very own design to the pumpkin by scratching lines into the clay or creating holes. Take a look at some of our results:

We are looking forward to painting them once they are dry!

As an extension to this learning, we used iPads, paint and stickers to create our very own dotty pieces of art work.

How to help at home:

• Moulding clay by pinching and pressing can be a tricky technique that requires well developed fine motor skills. Could you practise doing this with playdough at home?
• Visit an art gallery and observe the different sculptures you see. Discuss what you like and dislike, materials and colours used as well as techniques you think the artist might have used.
• Get some of your own moulding clay and make a different sculpture. Try joining pieces together using the score, slip and blend technique.

This term our science topic is Animals, including humans and looking at growth over time. We started by thinking about ourselves and the lifecycle of a human. We brought in photos of ourselves as babies and  really enjoyed looking at a gallery and working out who was who! The children then thought about the word grow and what it means (to increase in size and develop in ability). They described themselves to a partner thinking about how  they have stayed the same (i.e. eye colour) and how they have changed (i.e. grown taller, read a book).

We watched this clip:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/zt7w2hv.

We also focused on the word lifecycle and that it means the process that living things go through from the beginning of their life until their death.

We  identified  and named the different stages in the human timeline – baby-toddler-child-teenager-adult.

Following this, we thought about needs and wants and what the difference is between the two. As the children discussed this together they realised that most things suggested are actually things we want…we can survive without them!

We thought about the word survive in greater depth and identified the things that we as humans need to survive:

• water
• air
• food

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zx38wmn

This week we have found out that all animals need food but different animals need different types of food.

Together we recapped the meanings of herbivore, carnivore and omnivore.

The children researched some animals and created their own animal fact file focusing on their needs and how to look after them.

The children worked really hard and created super fact files that they shared with their peers. What brilliant scientists we have in Year 2!

How to help at home:

– Pick an animal of your choice to research and create a fact file about them. Can you include the vocabulary:

– Herbivore/ carnivore/ omnivore

-Survive

-Needs/wants

-Life cycle

Welcome back and a Happy New Year! The children have returned with stories of Christmas joy and new year excitement.

We got stuck in straight away with our learning this week. In English, we started to learn our new story: The Great Kapok Tree. We learnt the story which is based in a rainforest and linked it to our learning about the equator in Geography.

We began with a recap on how to make a sentence make sense. We used helpful colourful semantics (a writing structure that enables the children to understand how to make a sentence make sense). It reminded us to always use a who (the noun), a what doing (verb), a what and a where. We then made sentences linked to our class story. Take a look below:

The story has a lot of adverbs in the sentences so of course, we had to learn about them this week. Having already learnt about verbs last term, we knew that verbs are the doing words and learnt that adverbs add description to the verb. This could be about how, where or when the verb is being done, for example ‘The smaller man immediately struck the tree with an axe.’ Look  below at some of our work:

How to help at home:

• Do some daily sentence writing, ask your child to include a who, what doing, what and where.
• Ask your child to retell the story using the text map.
• Give your child a sentence with an adverb in and ask them to spot it in the sentence.