Topic
Happy New Year! As you may already know, our new Topic is all about Geography. We are learning about ‘The streets around our school’.
Today, we learned about human and physical features of the environment. A human feature is something man-made, built by a human. A physical feature is a natural part of our world. We went on a walk around the school grounds to look.
Some human features.
A physical feature.
We found some plants and discussed if they would be a human or physical feature.
‘They might be a human feature because a person would have had to plant it.’
‘It is part of nature so it could be a physical feature.’
Our learning also links to our RE topic – how can we look after our planet? We spent some time today discussing our favourite features of the school and whether they were physical or human features.
Help at home: look out for and discuss human and physical features on your way to school. Talk about which features you like and why.
Topic – Geography
This half term our topic is Geography. We’re all excited to become Geographers. Geographers are a type of scientist who studies the Earth. Geographers study the land (the physical features of the Earth) and the people who live within it (the human features).
This week, we’ve started by looking at an aerial map of our school, naming the four countries that make up the UK and their capital cities and listing some human and physical features in our environment.
We have enjoyed watching a video to help us to remember the 4 countries that make up the UK and their capital cities. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
We have also start to look at our Geography vocabulary, which you can see below.
Challenge: Can your child name the 4 countries that make up the UK and name their capital city?
Merry Christmas
During your Christmas break we hope you can:
- Spend time with the people you care about.
- Do the things that you enjoy.
- Watch your favourite program.
- Make somebody laugh and smile.
- Do something nice for somebody else.
- Visit your favourite place.
- Play with your toys
and finally have a wonderful Christmas and see you all in 2023!
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas! Have a happy and healthy holiday. Thank you for all your hard work this term, both in school and at home.
Countries and continents
This afternoon, we completed a challenge that Mr Wilks has set us. The big question we had was which continent has the most countries at the World Cup? We used atlases to help us find out which continent each of the 32 countries are in.
Then, we worked as a class to create a bar chart.
Help at home by asking your child questions about our bar chart. Some ideas:
- How many countries does Africa have at the World Cup?
- Do any continents have the same number of countries at the World Cup?
- Which continent has 1 country at the World Cup?
Active for Advent
In our PE sessions this half term, we’ve been thinking about movement. We know that we can move at different speeds, heights, directions and that we can move in many different forms of travel. It seems that our favourite form of travel is jumping in Year 2!
More recently, we’ve been completing a series of movement challenges. Help at home by staying active over Christmas – use our Advent calendar!
Feeling festive!
In Year 2 this week, we’ve completed some Christmas themed challenges. Have a look at what we’ve been getting up to!
Help at home by counting baubles together, finding the longest piece of tinsel or talking about your Christmas tree using adjectives. There’s lots of Christmas challenges that are fun and keep us learning!
Christingle and Christmas Production
What a busy week we’ve had in Year 1 and 2. On Wednesday, we went to church to celebrate Christingle. The children did a fab job singing their song ‘In a Stable’ and holding their candle very carefully.
We’ve also performed our Christmas production three times to an audience. We are all so proud of how well they all did.
Christmas events
It’s a busy time of year with so many things happening. Here is a reminder of the Christmas events taking place over the next two weeks:
Wednesday 7th December, 2pm: Christingle Service at St James’ Church
Thursday 8th December, 2.15pm: Early Years and KS1 Christmas play
Friday 9th December, 9.30am: Early Years and KS1 Christmas play
Tuesday 13th December: Christmas dinner
Wednesday 14th December: Early Years and KS1 parties (non-uniform)
Thursday 15th December: Ks2 parties (non-uniform)
During our productions, we will be raising money for our new school charity voted for by the Junior Leadership Team. This year we will be supporting Cancer Research UK.
Author: Bethan Woollvin
Yesterday, in KS1, we were lucky enough to have a special meeting with popular author, Bethan Woollvin! Not only does she write stories for children, she illustrates them, too. She delivered a virtual workshop all about her book ‘Little Red’. Ask your child what happens in the story! We read the book together and were shown how to draw our own Little Red character. We had a fantastic morning and many of us feel inspired to become authors and illustrators.
