Year 2
Mrs Lord and Mrs Hillyard are our Year 2 teachers. Mrs Lord teaches on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Mrs Hillyard teaches on Thursday and Friday.
Fairy Doors and Goblin Faces
We had so much fun working with our art teacher to create these amazing fairy doors and goblin faces. It was hard work rolling out and shaping the clay but what amazing pieces of art we created!
Minibeast Hotel
What fun we had making a special home for our mini friends! We worked as a team to carry and arrange the heavy pallets and bricks. We carefully filled the spaces with pine cones, tubes, pots, twigs and other snuggly spaces. We used the saw to carefully cut bamboo canes and plastic tubes. We used the hand drill to make little holes in larger pieces of wood. We are very proud of our creation.
Year 2 traveled back in time to 1856 to train as nurses and travel to care for the wounded soldiers in Scutari Hospital.
Maths is fun!
Today we explored capacity by measuring how many potfuls of water different containers held. We presented our data in tables and charts, and then we made our own containers. We were challenged to make a container from a single sheet of A4 card. Whose container held the most sand?
Hubble, Bubble Toil and Trouble!
We have been weighing ingredients to make magic potions. We had to follow the instructions to weigh and mix the correct ingredients. We used a variety of different scales, some increased in 50g steps, some 100g and some 200g, we had to work out which scale was best for each ingredient and sometimes we had to read between the lines.
The Beginning of Summer
We have been finding out all about plants in Science. We took the opportunity to explore the school grounds to begin a plant diary. We will revisit the plants in a few weeks to observe the changes.
The World of Work
In preparation for our visit to Kidzania we have been thinking about the difference between earning money and spending money. We set up a little town in our classroom, we each had a job where we would earn a salary and we each had a small amount of savings. We were then allowed to pay to take part in the activities but we had to remember to go to work as well. Some people spent all their savings very quickly and were a bit reluctant to stop having fun and return to work!
Happy Easter to all of our Year 2 families and friends.
Once upon a time...
...in a hall in Hertford Heath 57 characters from traditional tales spent the day together. They made homes for the Three Little Pigs, baskets for Red Riding Hood and cakes for Grandma, they designed their own crowns and made small theaters to tell their stories. In the afternoon they relaxed and listened to the enchanting tales of a story teller before finally making story tents to hold their own story telling sessions. What amazing stories they told! At the end of the day the characters returned to their families where they all lived happily ever after as all good stories do.
Building Boats
In Science we have been exploring different materials. We all brought in a selection of junk modelling objects. In pairs we had to design and build a boat that was waterproof, would float and have a special place for our teddy to sit. What a lot of fun we had!
Where does our printing go?
We have been learning how to print our work. We were however baffled about how and where our work went. Mrs Lord took us to the staff room and showed us how the printer worked.
Telling the Time
We have been learning to tell the time but still find it very difficult. We have made clocks to help us with this weeks maths lessons. Hopefully by the end of the week we will all be fantastic at telling the time and will never be late again.
Nets
We have been exploring the world of 3D shapes. We can tell you their names, how many faces, corners and edges they have. We had a fun maths lesson, making our own 3D shapes.
Three Days into March
We have been reading the poem Three Days into March. The poet writes a very descriptive poem about the beginning of spring. We visited our school grounds to search for signs of spring, we found 'golden yellow daffodils stretching to reach the warm sun' and could hear the 'cheerful tweets and songs of birds sitting in the limbs of tall trees.'
Handwriting Superheroes
Well done girls the first two to achieve their special pencil licence! They have worked hard learning to join their writing correctly and always presenting their work neatly. Who will be next? Which special pencil will they choose?
A Day of Investigating
Early one Tuesday morning we came to school to discover a extremely gloomy Ted. He was rather fed up with getting wet every time he went out to play. We put on our thinking caps and decided to become scientists to discover which material would make the best umbrella. We developed a question, made predictions, planned our method before finally carrying out the investigation. We then presented the results in a bar graph and developed a conclusion.
eBook Authors
Class 2 have become authors. We worked in pairs to create graphics, text and speech for our very own ebooks based on the story Stick Man.
Christmas Activity Morning
We all had a fantastic morning of Christmas crafts with our parents. Our mummies, daddies, nannies and granddad's were invited in to spend the morning with us, we made reindeer food, paper plate trees, giant snowflakes, finger print calendars and split pin characters. The grown ups had so much fun and we think the children enjoyed it too!
Hertford Food Bank
After a month of collecting food items for our giving advent 2 children along with Mrs Smith and Rev. Sharp delivered the 115 items to Hertford Food Bank. They weighed the items and found we had almost 46kg, before helping unpack them and place them on the shelves. Well done Year 2, we're very proud of you.
Stick Man Lives in the Family Tree
We have been exploring the story Stick Man. We can all tell the story using the actions and story map we developed to remind us of the events. We have written post cards from his journey and a thank you letter to Father Christmas to thank him for rescuing Stick Man from a sticky end. We also had 'the best lesson ever' collecting leaves and sticks from the school grounds to make collages of Stick Man, his lady love and the family tree.
Our Giving Advent
This advent Year 2 are thinking about people that don't have as much as we do. We have decided to have a reverse advent, where we give something each day instead of receiving something. We will take our donations to Hertford food bank in the last week of term.
Wildlife Fact Finders
We worked in partners to be expert wildlife fact finders. We thought about the types of things experts need to know, to develop our questions then we used a variety of books to find the answers. We used the contents page and the index to help us.
Habitats
In Science we have been finding out about living things and their habitats. We worked in groups to sponge paint a very old oak tree. We then thought about all the creatures that live in the tree and why. We had to use the conjunction, because, in our explanation sentence as well.
Design Technology
As it was the 31st October we decided to have an afternoon filled with Halloween crafts. We worked hard to make a paper pumpkin. First we had to use a ruler to measure 8 lines, it was tricky to make the lines the correct length and to keep them straight. Then we had to carefully follow the algorithm until the pumpkin began to take shape.
All aboard the Black Pearl for a Pirate Adventure.
We've learned our Learn-Its!
Practising our Learn-Its every day at home and at school is really doing the trick as today more than half of us remembered all of our Learn Its during Big Maths. Fantastic! I wonder how many we'll get next week.
Infant Agility Activity Morning
Pop see ko, pop, pop see ko!
Our hands are high, our feet are low everybody pop see ko! These action rhymes are such fun, they make us tidy up really quickly so we can join in. We have to listen and watch carefully to be sure we are doing the correct action.
We Love Wednesdays!
We love Wednesday mornings because our grown ups join us in the classroom. For the first 10 minutes of the day our grown ups come in to look at our work, they find out what we have been doing during the week and help us respond to the teachers feedback and complete our next steps.
Active Learn
We love Active Learn, it gives us the chance to practice our mental maths skills in a fun way. Today we had to be super speedy with number pairs to 10 and 20.
The hottest day in September since 1972
As it was predicted to be the hottest day in 34 years we decided we couldn't possibly spend the day inside. We put on our hats, grabbed our water bottles and used the play ground and chalk instead of our maths book and pencils. It was such fun and we did so much work!
Worry Dolls
We have been reading a story called Silly Billy, Billy is a little boy who worries about everything from hats to shoes and even giant birds. His Grandma tells him about tiny dolls called worry dolls that you put under your pillow. We decided to make our own worry dolls using wooden pegs and tiny pieces of fabric. It was quite tricky but we took our time and persevered, we are very proud of our little dolls.
Hanging and Climbing
We love using the large climbing equipment not only is it a great reward for all our hard work but it also helps keep us fit, strengthens our muscles, improves our balance and develops our problem solving skills.
Using the Laptops
We are learning how to safely use the laptops. We have to carefully unplug them and carry them to our tables. We have learnt to switch them on and log on using our own unique codes. We found it difficult putting them away as we muddled up some of the cables.
Reading Activities
Each day we spend some time doing different reading activities. Some of us share a book as a group, the teacher joins us for this activity. The rest of us work quietly either listening to a story on the wireless headphones, practicing our handwriting, working on comprehension or spelling activities, enjoying phonics games on the IPad or reading quietly from our school book.
Morning Activities
Our learning starts as soon as we arrive at school. Each morning we go straight to our tables to practice different skills, some mornings it's handwriting, some days it's spellings and other days it might be mental maths. We use these skills to help us improve our scores in our weekly beat that challenge and spelling quiz. We also earn handwriting superstars.
Estimating and Counting
