Science
Our Science this half term includes learning all about living things and their habitats. This week, with Mrs Bald, we’ve been exploring habitats and micro-habitats. A habitat is a home to a living thing. A micro-habitat is a smaller, different environment within the larger habitat that it is in. We put on our coats and went on a ‘habitat and micro-habitat hunt’ around the school grounds. We found lots of animals living under large sticks and in bushes – snails, spiders and even a bee!
Why not have a look in your garden or the local park to see what habitats and micro-habitats you can find?
Living and Learning
Today, in Living and Learning with Mrs Bald, we’ve been thinking about good manners and what it means to have them. We already know we use good manners each day because we say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ – this makes us polite. We talked about how we feel happy when people use good manners towards us.
Ways we can use good manners in our classroom: put your hand up if you’d like to say something, share with our learning partners, don’t interrupt and smile.
Ways we can use good manners in other areas of school: hold doors open for people, chew our food with our mouths closed and smile at everyone we see.
How do you use good manners at home?
Enjoying our reading!
There’s been lots of reading this week in Year 2! Today, we spent some time in the library choosing a book to enjoy at home. This will happen every Friday, so please bring these books back each week so that they can be changed. Some children still have books needing to be returned from last year. Please make sure these are returned soon so children can be issued a new book to enjoy.
We’ve also thought about traditional tales and alternative versions – reading The Three Little Pigs and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. We put on our best growling voices to join in with storytelling and be as fierce as the Big Bad Wolf! See if you can remember and re-tell either of the stories at home. It was hard to decide which version we enjoyed more!
Other reading this week includes our ICT Acceptable Use Policy. The children will be bringing home a copy tonight to read with you at home. It would be great if you could sign this and return to me next week.
Topic
This week, as you may have already seen or heard about, we started our History topic – The Great Fire of London. We learned about timelines and even went into the hall to make our own human timeline! We discussed some new vocabulary:
Past: an event or something that has already happened
Now: what is currently happening
Timeline: a line that shows us events in the order that they happened
Living memory: events that we remember because we’ve experienced them
The Great Fire of London was at the beginning of our timeline, far away from recent events because it happened so long ago. Ask your child if they know when the Great Fire of London was, or even how many years ago it happened!
History topic – The Great Fire of London
We have started our topic and we are learning all about The Great Fire of London. We are using a book, Vlad and the Great Fire of London, to stimulate our learning. (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 started by talking about the topic vocabulary, which you can see below. Help your child at home by exploring the information on the BBC bitesize website.
Look at our amazing learning. These are all the key facts we already know about the Great Fire of London!
Reading books
Today, your child will be bringing home a new reading record, their homework books and a letter about accessing e-books which will be assigned to your child every Friday, alongside spellings. Let’s get this year off to a great start by reading daily and sharing the book. Please fill in the records and bring them back into school every Thursday.
Our first week together!
Wow, what a week we’ve had in Year 2! It has been great to see the children looking happy and healthy as they return back to school. They have settled into our new classroom really quickly and it has been wonderful to hear about all the exciting things you have been up to over the summer holiday.
This week, in our living and learning session, Year 2 really impressed me with how well they understand our school rules. We discussed the three rules and how we can follow them, both in and out of the classroom. The children have certainly have put this into practice, with many compliments – how calm we are when getting on with our work and how sensibly we walk into collective worship. Keep this up, Year 2!
In maths, we have been recapping our knowledge of place value – see photos below from when we were ordering from greatest to smallest using our knowledge of tens and ones in a number. The children were tasked with ordering 3 numbers, but challenged themselves and wanted to order more! It was lovely to see how proud they were with their successes. We have also read and talked about our class novel, Vlad and the Great Fire of London, ahead of our topic learning starting next week. The first lesson will be focused on timelines. This weekend, why not discuss some events which would feature on a timeline of your life?
I have really enjoyed getting to know Year 2 this week and I am looking forward to lots of learning together. Please feel free to come and say hello or ask me any questions you have!
This week’s bible story
Jesus is friends with Zacchaeus: Luke 19: 1-10
Have you ever heard the story of Burglar Bill – Bill goes out every night. Getting into houses through open windows and taking things. Until one night, Bill found a baby, and that changed his whole life …
There is a Bible story about a man who stole from other people. He took extra money when he gave them their tax bills and became very rich on all the money that he stole. Zacchaeus was a little man and that small people can’t see in crowds. Read the story of Zacchaeus to find out what happened to him.
Reflection:
Jesus loved everyone when he lived on the earth. It didn’t matter how bad people were, Jesus was always there for those who needed him. This is true for us too – no one is so bad that God doesn’t love them. And the more time we spend with God – praying, thinking about him, finding out about him, the more we want to be like Jesus; kind, helpful and good. Just like Zacchaeus, Burglar Bill changed his ways and tried to be more like Jesus by loving those around him. Even though Burglar Bill and Zacchaeus made the wrong choice, God forgave them and continued loving them.
Prayer:
Dear God,
Thank you that Jesus loved Zacchaeus even when he wasn’t making the right choices. Help us to love all of those around us and be honest about our actions.
Amen
Tropical World
We have had a fantastic day at Tropical World. We saw lot of different animals – butterflies, a crocodile, fish, tarantulas, frogs, bearded dragons, iguanas, meerkats, birds, snakes and lots more.
We enjoyed a nice ice-cream in the sunshine and a picnic before we began our afternoon workshop.
In the workshop we learnt how to measure the height of a tree by laying metre sticks on the ground and how to calculate the age of a tree. We thought of different animals that live in trees too. Spiders, owls, ants, bees, beetles and bats were just some of the animals we thought of.
We also learnt how different animals adapt to their habitat. Meerkats have long tails to help them balance and check for prey. They have black rings around their eyes for protection from the sun and 2 eye lids – the second pair of eye lids are see through to stop sand getting in their eyes when they are digging. We also learnt that chameleons have a curly tail to wrap around things like trees and they change colour depending on their mood.
Well done Y12, you were amazing!
This week’s bible story
Joseph’s brothers lie about his death. Genesis 37:17-33
In the bible, there is a story about Joseph and his technicoloured dream coat. Joseph had 12 older brothers who didn’t like him very much. His father, however, loved him very much and would often say how we was his favourite. Joseph had lots of dreams and he liked to tell his brothers all about his dreams.
Joseph’s brothers were fed up with listening to his dreams. Why was he always the star in them? Why did he always think that he was so much more important than they were? Jacob, Joseph’s dad, heard their grumbles and decided to keep Joseph at home on the farm with him, while Joseph’s brothers were sent off into the fields to look after the sheep.
Then, Jacob did something that made Joseph’s brothers even more cross! He gave Joseph a special coat made of brightly coloured cloth. Joseph’s brothers were jealous and angry. They didn’t think it was fair that Joseph should be treated differently from them; they were upset that Joseph was their dad’s favourite.
Do you think Joseph’s brothers were right to be jealous?’
Joseph’s brothers were so cross that they began to plan to get rid of Joseph.
One day, when Jacob sent Joseph to take food to his brothers in the fields, the brothers grabbed Joseph and threw him down an old well! While they were considering what to do next, they heard the sound of people travelling along the dusty road. As they looked in the direction of the noise, they saw some travellers who were on their way to Egypt, with their camels loaded with spices that they hoped to sell there. What luck! This was a perfect way of getting rid of Joseph forever
. The brothers quickly pulled Joseph out of the well and handed him over to the travellers. Then, they watched as Joseph disappeared along the dusty road. Poor Joseph! His life had become a nightmare; perhaps he would wake up soon, and discover that it had all been a bad dream.
The brothers had got rid of Joseph, but what could they tell their dad? To try to cover up what they had done, they put some animal blood on Joseph’s special coat and took the coat home to show their dad.
‘Look what we found!’ they said to Jacob.
Jacob saw the coat and thought Joseph must have been killed by a wild animal. He cried and cried. The brothers tried to comfort him, but it was no use.
Reflection:
Do you think the brothers felt sorry and sad when they saw how much they had hurt their dad?
Do you think they were wrong to do what they did?
Should they have tried harder to like their brother, Joseph?
Should they have been honest with their dad about how they were feeling?
There are times when we don’t find it easy to like everyone. However, we feel, though, it is wrong to deliberately hurt people. It is always better to talk about things and try to sort out any problems between people.
Prayer:
Dear God,
Please help us to care for other people.
Please help us when we feel cross or jealous.
Please help us to talk about our problems with someone we trust.
Amen.