Our topic for term 1 is

'Fire! Fire!'

Suggested recommended reads for Year 2

Please click on the link below.

Books for Year 2. Great Reads for 6-Year-Olds (schoolreadinglist.co.uk)

EdShed Spelling

www.edshed.com

Please find your child's username and password in the back of the yellow reading record book.

The spellings for your child are set specifically for him/her. Paper copies of the words to learn for the week will still be sent home in the weekly homework folder.

Please come in and see us if you have any problems.

Our Great Fire of London Day.

What a day! It started off with a class photo to show off our outfits. Then we went to the hall for an amazing session with Jethro Knuckleskull. We managed to show off how much knowledge we already have about the fire of London, but he managed to find some extra bits of information to also teach us something new!

After play we wrote a thank you letter to Jethro, telling him all our best bits and the new learning we had gained.

This afternoon, we had a mixture of fire of London related activities including: playing the Great Fire of London game on ipads, playing a Great Fire of London board game, Top Trumps of jobs in 1666 and using non-fiction books to explore the best colours to use when colouring an image of London in 1666. We now consider ourselves to be Great Fire of London experts! 

Experience Harvest 

at

St Mary's Church

On Tuesday 18th October, Year 2 were invited to take part in a carousel of activities at St Mary's Church to celebrate Harvest. The children thoroughly enjoyed all their learning tasks and engaged whole heartedly in all 5 activities.

Special thanks to all the adults and especially Mrs Humm for organising this special event for the children.

The children described the morning as........incredibly good, amazing, super fun, awesome, fantastic, really exciting

1666 Houses

We used our knowledge of the Great Fire of London to make our own houses.

This challenge linked with our maths learning on 3D shape. We all covered a cuboid and used vocabulary such as faces, vertices, edges, rectangle, rectangular.

Thinking about our art skills, we really focussed on line, shape and colour, but also learned a new skill of layering. We drew carefully, measured accurately and cut out neatly.

We are very proud of our work and think all the houses look very realistic.

First 500 Reading Points Achieved

On Monday 10th October, Year 2 achieved their first 500 points for reading regularly at home. Great reading everyone! 

The children have voted for their special treat............a pyjama day! (date to be arranged)

Being 'Ready' and 'Responsible' for our learning.

Science - Properties of Materials

We explored the properties of different materials and then made a display for our learning wall.

History - Sources of evidence

We have been thinking about HOW we can find out facts about the Great Fire of London. As old as Miss Pike may be, she certainly isn't old enough to have been there!  We looked at some artists' impressions of the fire and then created our own.

Our Garden Plots

Special thanks to Mrs Holdaway and Mrs Guy for providing an opportunity for Churchill children to get involved with Gardening Club. 

For about half an hour every Tuesday lunchtime, Mrs Holdaway, Mrs Guy and a dedicated team of children work together to look after all the Garden Plots.

Below, are some examples of what they harvested this week.

Painting in Art

 We listened to the story of Wilberforce the Frog, who with his dad, painted different coloured and shaped steppingstones. We painted their steppingstones and then created some of our own, thinking about the visual elements of pattern and shape.

History - How did they try and put the fire out?

We explored some of the methods that were used to try and put the Great Fire of London out. These included...

1. Running to and from the River Thames with buckets of water. (too tiring and took too long!)

2. Passing buckets along a line from the River to the fire. (less tiring, but still took too long)

3. Using squirts to squirt water at the fire. (squirts didn't hold very much water)

4. Using fire hooks to pull down houses to create a firebreak. (was quite tiring and took a while to pull down just 1 house)

5. Using gunpowder to blow up houses to create a firebreak. (was much more effective!)

English - A Historical Visitor!

This week, Thomas Farriner came to visit! We wrote some questions to ask him about how the fire started in his bakery. We made sure we started our questions with a 'question word' and we finished with a question mark.

ICT - An introduction to coding

We enjoyed exploring how to make a 'sprite' move around the screen by giving it instructions.

Science - Materials

Can you tell your grown up which materials these objects are made from? Can you also tell them some of the properties of these materials?

Science - recognising and sorting materials

We looked at objects in our classroom and sorted them according to what material they are made from. We then discussed how some of the objects are made from 2 or more different materials!

History - How did the Great Fire of London start?

We learned about how and where the fire started, acted out the fire jumping from house to house and then recreate the scene using building bricks. We use red, yellow and orange paper to add flames to our scene too! Can you see how close together the houses are?

E-safety - Keeping Safe Online

We learned a short song to help remind us how to keep safe online.

Before you tap and click...

You need to stop and think...

And TELL someone! 

ART

Painting Unit

Linking with our maths learning on shape, we have been looking at lines, shapes and colours in the work of artist Wassily Kandinsky.

We first thought about the shapes we wanted to use in our masterpieces. Thinking about the use of space too, we drew around shapes which were overlapped or drawn in isolation.

Next, we added lines. Again, thinking about space, we drew different lines- long, short, straight, curved, thick and thin.

Maths learning

2D shape

We have started our learning by recognising and naming 2D shapes- circle, triangle, square, rectangle, pentagon, hexagon, octagon. We have also learnt about polygons.

On our shape hunt, we found lots of different shapes in our school environment, including a hexagon and octagon.

We've also been looking at the value of 10s and 1s in two digit numbers.

Knowing that 36 = 3 tens and 6 ones or 36 ones, rather than 30 tens and 6 ones!

Speaking and Listening

Making the most of the dry weather. This is our first Year 2 check in.