Living and Learning – Strong emotions

In Living and Learning this half term, we’re learning about emotions and friendships.

We’ve talked about recognising emotions in ourselves and others and the benefits of speaking openly about them.

We discussed 6 key emotions

• Happy
• Excited
• Tender
• Scared
• Angry
• Sad

Empathy

What is empathy? Empathy is being able to know how someone else is feeling, even when you aren’t in the same situation. Sometimes we call empathy being able to “put yourself in someone’s shoes” and see things from their view.

We explored some situations in which children may have different emotions to one another. It’s important to be respectful of those emotions and acknowledge the importance of sharing them. Keeping feelings to yourself can have a negative impact on your mental wellbeing.

Where can I go for help with my emotions?

• talk to a trusted adult at school
• talk to a trusted adult at home
• talk to a friend
• put your worry in the Living and Learning box

Help at home by encouraging your child to express their emotions. Use the feelings wheel (above) to help. Compare the words in each segment of the feelings wheel – for example, does irritated feel different to furious?

Reading – The Lorax

In reading, we’re enjoying The Lorax by Dr Seuss. The Lorax is an engaging story with strong themes, told amusingly by way of rhyme. The children have enjoyed exploring the messages in The Lorax about environmental crisis and activism, building on our geography learning from last half term.

One of our favourite reading activities is ‘hot-seating’ in which children play the parts of characters from a story and answer questions. This is a brilliant platform for practising inference skills.

The children really impressed me; questioning, inference, acting – I saw it all!

We made sure to look the part…

Help at home by encouraging your child to think of some questions they’d like to ask characters in their favourite story. Take it in turns to step into character and have a go at answering the questions…

Maths – Equal Groups

In maths, we’ve begun our multiplication and division learning.

Our focus this week has been equal and unequal groups. Equal groups contain the same number of items; unequal groups do not.

The children have enjoyed making equal groups with multilink cubes.

Help at home by looking for equal groups in the world around us. How many groups are there? How many are there in each group? How many are there altogether?

Science – Habitats

In science, we’re biologists! We’re learning about animals and their habitats.

This week, we’ve learned about polar habitats and desert habitats, using secondary sources to conduct research and create some animal fact files.

Help at home by exploring some animal facts. The National Geographic Kids website is fantastic!

Living and Learning – Internet Safety Workshop

Today, we were lucky to welcome Dave from d:side for an internet safety workshop.

Here are a few things we learnt:

• Lots of different devices can be used to access the internet, even fridges and kettles!
• 2 billion people around the world access the internet every day.
• Everyone can see what you upload to the internet.
• Not all videos on Youtube are suitable for all ages. Use YouTube Kids to stay safe.
• Games use number ratings to help us to know which games are suitable for our age.

Dave was really impressed by the children’s knowledge and made special mention to their focus and engagement. Well done, Year 2!

Help at home by discussing internet safety with your child. Do you have any rules for staying safe on the internet at home?

An unscheduled visit…

Last week, we explored our locality as part of our geography topic, conducting fieldwork to study the geography of our school and its surrounding environment.

As we reached the fire station to survey the traffic, recycling bins and litter, Mr Nash rang the doorbell…

Please can we have a look at your fire engine?

Moments later, the shutter opened and out drove the shiny, red fire engine!

The team at Wetherby Fire Station were so generous with their time, giving the children a tour of the vehicle and its tools, providing lots of opportunities to ask questions. The children really enjoyed the experience and asked some fantastic questions, representing our school fantastically with their impeccable manners.

Thank you to everyone at Wetherby Fire Station for being so accommodating with our unscheduled surprise visit. A lesson in “if you don’t ask, you don’t get.”…

Help at home by discussing what firefighters do to help in our community. Watch and discuss this video from West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue.

Reading – Sequencing and Summarising

In reading and writing, our focus text is Flooded by Spanish author and illustrator, Mariajo Ilustrajo.

We’ve really enjoyed this text, exploring the key themes by asking questions and making connections.

A theme is a big idea or message.

Flooded is a funny tale of animals in a slowly flooding city. Behind the humorous story and illustrations, there’s an important message. Flooded touches on themes of environmental crisis and responsibility, as well as the power of community, and working together to fix a problem.

We’ve used the text to practise our summarising skills – summarising is retelling a story in your own words.

The children impressed me with their skills, sequencing pictures from the story and writing a summarising sentence for each.

Help at home by inviting your child to summarise Flooded. Can they tell you about the key themes? Try sequencing and summarising events in a different text. What happened first? What next? What happened at the end?

Living and Learning – I can assess my own risks

In Living and Learning, we’re learning about staying safe. This week, our statement is:

We began by discussing some key vocabulary:

danger – a cause of harm or injury
safety – keeping free from harm or danger
risk – the possibility of something dangerous happening

We spent some time thinking about times we’ve been exposed to risk, how we assessed them and the measures we took to stay safe? We thought specifically about our recent trip to Lotherton Hall.

Risk – getting lost

How did we stay safe? – stayed with our group

Risk – crossing the road

How did we stay safe? – checked for cars, walked in pairs with adult supervision

Risk – animals biting us

How did we stay safe? – not poking our hands through the railings

Risk – slipping on ice in the playground

How did we stay safe? – walking

How can we stay safe at home?

Here are some top tips from the children for staying safe at home:

Stay away from cleaning products. Ask a trusted adult for help. Woody

Don’t play near fire. Poppy

Keep soap away from your eyes. Vallan

Don’t touch plugs. Alfie

Only use sharp knives with adult supervision. Ariella

Help at home by trying this hazard detective game.

Can you come up with top 5 tips for staying safe at home?

Science – Lotherton Hall

On Tuesday, we donned our high vis jackets and biologist hats to visit Lotherton Hall’s Wildlife World. Year 2 represented St James’ brilliantly and thoroughly enjoyed their day out.

We started our day with a workshop about animals and habitats. The children were invited to work like biologists by observing some replica skulls, comparing their teeth before pondering what this might tell us about their diet – the carnivores had sharp teeth; the herbivores flat, rough teeth. We learnt about a variety of animals, including penguins, snakes and tapirs.

After the workshop, we explored the zoo. The children were fascinated by a range of animals from around the world. We were particularly enamoured by the penguins and the exploits of Arthur the tapir…

We had a fantastic day out and the children have returned to school with oodles of animal knowledge! This visit prepares us for our next science unit: Animals – Habitats

Help at home by inviting your child to recount their day at Lotherton Hall (Can they use time adverbials? e.g. First, Next, Then, After that, Finally). Can your child remember the habitats we learnt about in the workshop? Encourage your child to work like a scientist by asking questions – what would you like to find out about animals and their habitats?

Living and Learning – I know what a drug is

Our Living and Learning statement this week is:

“A drug is a substance that changes the way the body or mind works.”

The children began by sharing what they already know about medicines.

Not all medicines help your health.

Medicines help you to recover when you are ill. To recover is to get better.

Drugs can change your attitude. They can make you angry and some drugs are illegal.

Some drugs can make your body stronger – some people use them to cheat in sports.

Some people need to get medicine every day.

We get medicine from the doctor.

You keep drugs safe by keeping them somewhere children can’t reach.

You can try and help yourself by eating healthily and exercising before taking medicine.

I was so impressed by the children’s previous knowledge of medicine!

Helping someone to feel better

We spent some time thinking about times when we were ill or felt unwell and the things that helped us to feel better.

• rest
• water
• medicine from the doctor
• warm drink
• eating healthy food
• plasters

There are lots of different types of medicine and they’re all useful for different things. Some of them go in the body and others on the body. Some can be bought at the shop by a responsible adult; others have to come from the doctor.

Who can help?

We thought about the people who can help us to stay healthy and well. The children demonstrated fantastic knowledge of people in their communities who can help.

• parents and family
• carers
• doctors
• trusted adults at school
• police
• paramedics
• air ambulance
• mountain rescue
• yourself – keep safe and protect yourself

If you feel unwell, it is important to talk to a trusted adult at home or school. Only a trusted adult should give you medicines.

Help at home by discussing the safety measures you have in place around medicine at home. Invite your child to demonstrate their learning by having a go at this task: