Welcome to Class 2
Mrs Varley

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Oceans, Seas and Pirates Topic

Pirate Day!

We started our week with a special, fun-filled ‘pirate day’. We enjoyed learning a pirate song and adding in some extra lines of our own. We then made our own treasure and jewels with sparkly beads before designing treasure maps and our own Jolly Roger flags. We also decorated our own hard tack biscuits with treasure island designs before lunch. After lunch we played pirate games on the playground and then worked together to complete a maths themed pirate code breaking activity in which the children worked out that the ‘treasure’ was inside the hall. We won some gold coins and a pirate feast in which we ate chocolate cannons balls, catch of the day (shrimp sweets), popping corn and fruity ships! It was a very exciting and enjoyable day!

Moving Pictures

At the start of our Design Technology project we enjoyed practising different joining techniques, including pivots and sliders! The children had a great time making crocodiles with opening and closing mouths, as well as ostriches with necks that grow! We then decided to incorporate these techniques into our under the sea moving picture boxes. We all decided to use paper straws as sliders, both horizontally and vertically so that different animals could move around in our pictures. The children then constructed their boxes with a variety of different materials and textures and many had to overcome obstacles such as piercing holes and finding ways of attaching different parts. We had such a great time making these!

Sea Life Centre, Birmingham

We had a great time at the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham. We saw some very funny penguins who were keen to entertain us by diving and racing in the water. We then made our way up to the rock pool where we were allowed to touch starfish and crabs and a kind lady talked to us about mermaids purses. After that we explored the clownfish and manta rays before going to watch a special Octonauts movie in the special 4D cinema in which we got squirted in the face with water! After lunch, we headed to the ocean tunnel and we were amazed at all of the big sharks, sting rays and turtles that we swimming right above our heads!

William Turner 'Stormy Seas' art work

​For our topic work we have been exploring the art work of an artist called William Turner. We found out that he liked to paint pictures of the seas and oceans, especially when they were stormy. We spent time looking at his various paintings, identifying similarities and differences as well as colours that he used. We then used the water colour paints to create stormy coloured strokes across our pages. When they dried we ripped them up to look like waves and layered them onto blue backgrounds before making a boat to add to our pictures.

Pirate Ship Role Play

We are already really enjoying our new Spring Term topic: Oceans, Seas and Pirates! So far we have enjoyed exploring maps of the world and the UK. We have been idenfying countries that make up the UK and groups of countries that make up the 7 continents of the world, as well as exploring the locations of oceans and seas. One of our favourite things so far has been playing in the pirate ship role play area! The children can plan treasure maps, write pirate diaries, learn about compass directions and re-enact being pirates!

Fighting Fit
Topic

Bandaging

We've had a great time learning about the role of a doctor and practising some first aid this week! We watched some interesting videos from the St. John's ambulance and practised bandaging each other's hands and heads!

Hospital role play

We are thoroughly enjoying our new topic- fighting fit. So far we have been learning about bones, body parts, the emergency services, ambulances and paramedics. We have also spent lots of time playing in our new role play area- Husbands Bosworth's Hospital. The children can take emergency calls, write doctor's notes, complete patient information sheets, explore various xrays, bandage each other up (or the poorly teddies) and dress up as doctors and nurses!

How does your garden grow?

Salad making

We've had a great time planning and making our very own salads! The children identified different parts of the plants that we could eat and we included many of these in our salads, including roots such as beetroot and carrots, stems such as celery and asparagus, leaves such as rocket leaves or lettuce and fruits such as cucumber, tomato and apple! The children very carefully cut the different foods after being shown different ways of cutting safely.

Sunflower paintings

As part of our topic, we have been exploring artwork by the artists Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. We have spent time looking closely at the paintings to identify colours and styles used. We have also spotted similarities and differences between the paintings. We then decided to recreate the famous 'sunflowers' painting by Van Gogh. We watercoloured our paper in order to create a background colour and then we studied some real life sunflowers and drew them before painting them. All of the children tried really hard and took their time and we are all so impressed with our art work. 

Minibeast poems

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We have had great fun reading and reciting many poems linked to our topic work. We have also enjoyed adpating well known minibeast poems, including 'incy wincy spider' as well as writing our very own poems  about a variety of minibeasts. We have worked hard on including adjectives, interesting words and even making our poems rhyme! Many of the children counted the amount of syllables in each line to make sure that they were roughly the same. Click on the spider to read our fantastic poems!

Bird feeders

Hedgehog homes
We had a great time making our very own bird feeders! The children mixed together a variety of seeds, raisins and dried bugs before loading the mixture into yogurt pots and hanging them in the trees and on the fence in our outdoor area! We are waiting to see if we can attract some birds!
We thoroughly enjoyed working in teams to create some hedgehog homes. The children used a variety of cutting and joining techniques, including using mini hacksaws to create a tunnel into the home. The children then constructed them outside near the hedges and covered them with plastic bags and secured them with bricks. Some children even put in some tasty slug treats!

Plant and flower hunt

We have thoroughly enjoyed learning about different types of trees- deciduous and evergreen, and flowers. We went on a flower and plant hunt around our school grounds and we were lucky to be invited into the garden of one of our school neighbours- June. At her house we saw lots of lovely plants and she enjoyed showing and telling us about them! 

Planting the vegetable patch

We've had a great time digging and preparing our growing garden this week. The children helped to dig the soil before planting a variety of vegetables including leeks, onions and runner beans as well as planting some tomatoes in the green house! We will water them daily!

Making cress heads!

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We decided to have some fun making our very own cress heads. The children used parts of old tights to fill with cress seeds and cotton wool before decorating them with googly eyes and felt mouths. We will water them after half term and hopefully help them to grow some curly cress hair!

Planting plants

Creating potions
​In Science, we have been learning about the different parts of a plant and the function of each part. We followed this learning up in our topic work when we spent a lovely afternoon outside planting our very own plant pets! The children explored the different types of flowers and discussed how the flowers were similar or different- shapes of petals, leaves, colours etc.  Each child has their very own plant to look after and care for (which they are very excited about)!
In Maths we have been learning all about capacity and volume. The children were set a challenge to build up their skills throughout the week in order to help Maths Monkey make some very important potions at the end of the week. The skills building activities involved: comparing containers to see which had the most/least liquid, measuring how much a container could fit inside, reading the scales on measuring jugs and adding together amounts to create a potion. I’m pleased to report that the children made some very successful (and some disgusting) potions! 
​We are thoroughly enjoying our new topic- 'How does your garden grow?'. The children shared their knowledge about plants, flowers and growing and we then generated some questions that we would like to find out the answers to during this topic! The children have spent time making tissue paper flowers for our new role play area (Class 2 Garden Centre), as well as drawing some beautiful pictures of daffodils this week!

Australia Topic

Aboriginal Art

The children have thoroughly enjoyed learning about Aboriginal Australia. They have explored a variety of Aboriginal art work, picking out similarities between paintings. We also learnt about the signs and symbols used in Aboriginal art, before experimenting with patterns ourselves. The children created their very own animal Aboriginal art as well as making didgeridoos and painting them in similar patterns.The children also spent time developing their computer skills by creating Aboriginal art pictures on the 2simple paint software! Here's a few examples of our computer art work:

World Book Day

We've had a great time celebrating World Book Day! The children all looked fantastic dressed up as their favourite book characters. They enjoyed talking about their characters, books and stories as well as taking part in a book quiz, creating silly stories, decorating book tokens and listening to a variety of the teacher's favourite stories!

Non- Chronological reports

We have really enjoyed reading, exploring and looking at the structure of non- chronological reports. As a class we read reports on sharks and dolphins and then decided that we wanted to have a go at writing a class report for a different Australian animal. The children chose to write about Koala bears so they worked in groups to research and write a paragraph about different aspects of Koalas. We then put all of our writing together. Click on the koala bear to read our class report -------->

Role play area- Australian animal watch

Welcome back! We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! We have already been very busy creating our new role play area and deciding what we would like to know about Australia. Our new role play area is called 'Australian animal watch'. The children can camp out in the camouflaged tent and look out for various animals in different habitats. We have our very own outback, rainforest and great barrier reef. The children can complete animal identification checklists, draw and label pictures, write diary entries and even send postcards to their friends and family!

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Great Fire of London Topic

Christmas role play area

We are well and truly in the Christmas spirit in Class 2! We had an amazing time performing our Christmas nativity 'Baubles' and now we are enjoying playing in our Christmas post office role play area. We can wrap and weigh parcels as well as write postcards and Christmas cards!

Our trip to the Fire Station

We had an amazing time at Market Harborough fire station on Wednesday. We were greeted by four very friendly firefighters and they were very keen to show us the fire engines. We spent lots of time exploring the fire engines, learning about all of the different things that they carry. The children even got to hold the hoses and climb into the back of the fire engines and try on the gas masks. The children then had a go at trying on some of the fire safety clothing before Miss Eason and Mrs Bell had a race to see who could get the fire clothing on in the fastest time! We then went outside to squirt the hose. The fire fighters placed a cone outside (as a pretend fire) and the children had to try and reach the cone with the hose spray- to put the fire out! Finally, the children had a talk about fire safety and they learnt abou what to do in an emergency. After such a busy afternoon, the children all passed their junior firefighters training and recieved a card to prove they could now spread the fire safety messages!

Great Fire of London Poems

The children have really enjoyed their poetry unit. We have read and explored poems about the Great Fire of London and the children have been learning about different word types, including verbs and adjectives. The children worked in small groups to create their own poems about the fire (including adjectives and verbs) and we think they are fantastic. Click on the flames below to read of our group poems:
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Group 1
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Group 2
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Group 3
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Group 4
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Group 5
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Group 6

Samuel Pepys Portraits
We've had a great time learning about Samuel Pepys. The children have helped him to complete parts of his diary and they found it very funny that he buried his wine and cheese! We then learnt how to draw face portraits and the children all had a go at drawing Mr Pepys!

Home projects

WOW! I am amazed at the variety of brilliant home projects that the children have completed for their Great Fire of London half term homework! We have enjoyed looking at, discussing and even tasting each others' work. Projects included: lego buildings, 3D houses, a variety of art work, bakery items, posters, videos and even a song!

Great Fire of London Art

We have really enjoyed being artists; creating paintings of the Great Fire of London. We discussed how art from the time of the fire can tell and show us things about the fire. However, we also discussed the fact that paintings only show one moment in time or one area and therefore they can't tell us the full story of an event. We have enjoyed using different techniques to create our display and our very own art. The children used charcoal to draw their own Tudor houses. We then explored mixing paints to make oranges and different shades of fiery colours for the flames. Finally (and probably our favourite), we learnt how to marble paper using water and marbling inks. We used a combination of red, yellow and oranges marbling inks to create fiery backgrounds before adding some black, silhouette buildings!

Bread Makers

After learning about Thomas Farriner the baker, we decided that we wanted to have a go at making some real bread too! We tasted different types of bread and described how they tasted and whether we liked them or not- baguettes were our favourite! We then learnt how to make bread by following instructions to make either white or brown bread. The children helped to measure out the ingredients, put it all together, knead and finally shape their bread.We baked them in a modern oven and they looked and smelt delicious! I hope they tasted nice too!

​Tudor Houses

As part of our topic, we have been learning about the styles of houses in London at the time of the fire. We learnt that the fire happened during the Tudor times and therefore the house styles were called Tudor houses. The children were very interested and a bit disgusted to find out that the houses were mainly made from wooden beams with the walls being filled and constructed with twigs, mud and animal dung (wattle and daub)! We were also surprised to learn that the beams were coated with tar to stop them from rotting. The children then explored the different patterns of wooden beams and the different styles of roofing, before drawing their own Tudor style house designs using charcoal. Finally, the children made good use of their boxes that they brought in and we made our very own pudding lane!

How and why did the fire spread?

The children are very inquisitive and love learning facts about the Great Fire of London. We learned that the houses were very close together, the streets were very narrow and the houses were constructed with wooden beams which made them very easy to burn and spread! The children then discussed ideas for stopping the fire and learnt about people pulling houses down and blowing them up with gunpowder to create fire breaks! Finally we acted out the fire to show how easy it was to spread.

Great Fire of London- the facts

The children were very exctied to start our Great Fire of London topic. We wrote lots of questions for things that we would like to find out about the fire and this week we started learning some of the facts. We examined a variety of clues and links to the fire and the children pieced together the information from what they could see. We then read some facts and the children worked in small groups to order the events of the fire.

The Bakery Role Play

We are delighted with our very own 'Royal Bakery' that we have made for our role play area this term. The children worked hard to make lots of flames to add to our display and they've had a great time playing in there. The children can: take people's orders by filling in order sheets, make a variety of buns, bread and cakes using the (play) dough and they can charge and give change for the bakery items that they sell.
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Husbands Bosworth Primary School