Week 1

English - Meerkat Mail

A suitcase was found outside our classroom at the start of the week labelled from Madagascar. As a class we looked inside it and found some very random items that didn't appear to have any connections. The children inferred who the suitcase might belong to based on the different things within it. One of the items was a meerkat and the very next day the meerkat was spotted with a book called "Meerkat Mail". After reading the story the children worked out that all the item related to the story and that the meerkat was called "Sunny".

Maths - Counting in 2's, 5's, 10's and 3's

This week we continued to develop our knowledge of skip counting by exploring patterns that are made when counting in 2's, 5's, 10's and 3's. The children used concrete resources and number lines to represent the different jumps and then explained the patterns they recognised. We then used this knowledge to complete missing number sequences. 

PSHE - Helping Hand

This week the children shared times that they have helped others and how it felt talked about how it made themselves and others feel. The children then got first hand experience of helping others by taking it in turns to help their friends through an obstacle course whilst they were blindfolded. The children then shared how it felt to help and be helped.

DT - Making Pencil Pot Carriers and evaluating

This week the children used different joining techniques to complete their pencil pot carriers. The children then evaluated their models by thinking about what they liked about their model, what they found tricky and how they overcame challenges, and finally what they would do differently to make their models even better next time.

Week 2

Armistice Day

At the start of the week all of the children showed their respect in the hall by doing a 2 minute silence to remember the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.

History - In Flanders Field

Throughout this week the children have learnt about the symbolic importance of the poppy and how it inspired John Macrae to write his poem "In Flanders Field". The children compared pictures of battlefields and poppy fields and created an adjective word wall to describe how the pictures made them feel. The children learnt about John Macrae and how he came to write "In Flanders Field". The children then explored the poem in more detail by creating pictorial annotations of what different lines meant and then created their own pieces of art based around the poem.

Maths - Arrays

This week we started to look at arrays and how these are set up in rows and columns and help us to use our skip counting skills to help us count multiple objects quicker. We learnt that arrays are used in everyday items such as food packaging and for architecture. The children went on an array scavenger hunt and identified and wrote sentences to match the arrays they found. We looked at how we can use arrays to help us group and share objects and put this into practise by grouping and sharing each other. 

English - Meerkat Mail

This week the children learnt about creating comparative and superlative adjectives by adding suffixes "er" and "est" and the spelling rules that need to be followed to spell the words correctly. The children used these adjectives to write sentences about Sunny the Meerkats journey throughout the story. In the book Sunny is looking for the perfect place to live so the children were set the challenge of trying to find a new home for Sunny by thinking about good and bad points of different places.

Art - Primary Colours

This week the children started their new art topic inspired by the Great Fire of London. We will be looking at different painting and sketches from around the time and learning the different artists skills and techniques. To help prepare the children for painting they were set the challenge of creating a colour wheel by only using the 3 primary colours. The children mixed the colours to make secondary colours and also explored how the continuous addition of white can create tinting to colours. 

PE - Games - Aiming, sending and receiving

Following on from last weeks work with beanbags, the children explored the difference in sending balls and how they use their bodies to aim and send and how to position themselves to receive a ball. The children then put these skills into practise by aiming at targets and sending balls back to their partners.

Week 3

PSHE / Computing

This week we developed our knowledge and understanding of internet safety by exploring thinking about whether or not things we see on the internet are reliable and safe. We discussed how the advancement of technology has blurred the lines of reality and fiction and how we we should check with a responsible adult if we are unhappy or unsure about things we see online. The children then looked at different fake websites and sorted them into groups of whether or not they were suitable for children, okay to look at with a responsible adult, or not suitable at all.

Maths - Geometry - Properties of 2D shapes

This week we recapped recognising and describing 2D shapes by their properties. The children then explored what half of something means - one whole split into two equal parts. This led on to introducing lines of symmetry of shapes and objects. The children cut out and folded 2D shapes to work out how many lines of symmetry different shapes had.

English - Features of an informal letter

In preparation for the children to write their own informal letters, we reviewed what features we would expect to find in this type of writing. The children were able to recall the feature from last half term and then were able to identify them in an unseen letter. The children then used these features to plan their own letters as Sunny the Meerkat to his family.

PE - Dance - The Great Fire of London - people vs the fire

This week we focussed on looking at the different jobs the people during the great fire of London may have done - baker, shop keeper, etc. The children created different movements to show these different jobs and then performed them for their friends to guess. The children then got into groups and using their knowledge of high and low body parts and twisting and turning to create a movement piece showing how the people came together to try and put the fire out using buckets and water from the River Thames.

Let it snow!!

Thursday morning the children were slightly distracted by lots of white stuff falling from the sky so we thought we would make the most of it and enjoy playing in it!!!

PE - Games - striking

This week the children explored using their arms and wrists to strike balls in different ways to send them towards targets and team mates. The children worked together to create their own games to put the skills into practise.

Week 4

English - The Tunnel

This week the children got a suprise when a mysterious tunnel appeared in our classroom. The children courageously crawled through and found our new writing journey story, Anthony Browne's The Tunnel.

Maths - One more/less, ten more/less

This week the children developed their place value knowledge by comparing numbers and ordering them either as greater than, less than or equal to other numbers. The children then created and solved their own maths problems focussing on one more/less and ten more/less than a chosen number.

PSHE - Don't do that!

This week we continued to explore relationships and what we would do if we witnessed or experienced bullying. We started off with circle time and shared our thoughts on why some people might bully before exploring different things we could say if we say someone bullying or being bullied. 

Computing - Photography - Landscape or portrait?

In computing this week the children explored the difference between taking a photo in landscape and portrait. The children experimented taking pictures of different things both in portrait and landscape before deciding which type of photos suited being taken as portrait and landscape. 

Music - Fascinating rhythms

Following on from last weeks exploration of keeping a steady beat the children were introduced to the concept of a crochet (one beat) and a quaver (multiple beats). The children were given the words "clip", "clop" and "jingle" and explored creating their own 16 beat rhythm by ordering the words and playing the different compositions they made. 

Art - Painting in the style of Lieve Verschuier 

Having experimenting with colour mixing a couple of weeks ago the children got thew opportunity to put there learning into practise by creating their own interpretation of the Dutch painter Lieve Verschuier's Great Fire of London. Verschuier used a combination of thin and thick brushes to create his works of art and so the children switched between brushes for their own artistic creations. 

History - London now and then

This week we discussed and explored how London looks today and then compared it with how London looked back in 1666. We discussed why certain things may have changed - for example the material used for making buildings and how transport has changed drastically in the last 350 plus years. 

PE - Games - Striking a ball

This week in games we focused on how we can send and receive a ball with the use of a bat. The children learnt the importance of having a strong wrist to angle the bat in the right direction and using the bat as an extension of the arm to aim and guide where the ball is going to be sent. The children practised sending a ball to their partner to receive and send it back with control before creating and playing their own striking and target hitting games. 

Week 5

Maths - Bridging

This week in maths we have been focussing on bridging through tens when adding or subtracting. The children have to use their previous knowledge of number bonds to 10 to help them work out how many more or how many less are needed to reach the nearest ten and then add/subtract the remainder.

English - The Tunnel

This week we continued our writing journey on Anthony Browne's The Tunnel. After listening to the whole story the children were set the challenge of sequencing pictures from the story before creating their own story maps of the story focussing on key language and main characters and events. The children then developed their understanding of the uses of possessive apostrophes and subordinating conjunctions when writing sentences about the main characters Rose and Jack.

Music - Tuned percussion and rhythms

This week the children performed their rhythmic compositions they had created last week before moving on to exploring how rhythms can be created with tuned percussion. The children were given the challenge of placing the notes in the correct position and order on an empty xylophone. 

History - Why did the fire spread so far?

This was the question the children explored this week. The children met Frederick Pike, a boatman who worked on the River Thames during the Great Fire of London. Frederick answered the children's questions as he told them what he saw and what he knew about the Great Fire. The children then had to decide what they thought was the main cause for the fire spreading so far and showed this by moving to the reason.

Art - Sketching - expanded starting points

This week the children were given an extract from an unknown artists sketch or The Great Fire of London. The children had to investigate what they could see in their extract and recognise styles and patterns used. The children then were asked to finish the sketch by drawing what they thought the rest of the art work looked like. 

Science - Waterproof materials

This week the children learnt about Charles Mackintosh who was a Scottish architect and designer best known for inventing the first waterproof coat. The children set up a fair test experiment to test a range of materials to see which materials had the best and worst waterproof properties.

Week 6

Computing - Photography - Light and dark

This week in computing we explored the importance of light and how it can be manipulated to create different effects and how it can affect our photos. The children experimented taking photos with contrasting light to see which ones were better.

Music - Scaled percussion

The children recapped what they had learnt from last week by correctly rearranging the notes on an xylophone before exploring and experimenting playing different notes patterns by climbing, jumping and sliding up and down the scales.

Art - Creating a mood

Over this last half term, the children have looked at a range of different paintings and sketches from various artists in isolation. Today we looked at a collection to see the similarities and differences between them and to get an overall feeling of the mood each artist was trying to create and tell us about their piece. The children then took what they had learnt from this term and applied it by creating their own moody painting inspired from the works of art they had just seen.

Christmas jumper and dinner day

On Thursday Year 2 enjoyed going into the hall with the rest of the school and eating their Christmas dinner together. 

Science - Materials with the best heat retaining properties.

Following on from last week, where we looked at the waterproofing properties of materials, we did an experiment to explore which materials were the best for retaining heat. We had 5 cups of hot water which were covered and wrapped in different materials. The children hypothesised which material they thought would be the best, explaining their reasons. We left them for around half an hour and then measured the temperature of the water to see if our hypothesises were correct and if not why they weren't.

History - 1666 Tudor houses

On Friday the children got to share their amazing homework with their friends and the rest of the school. Thank you to all the grown ups for helping create such incredible Tudor houses.  

Father Christmas

On Friday we had a lovely surprise when Father Christmas popped into our class and wish us all a merry Christmas and to ask us what we wanted for Christmas.

Christmas Activity afternoon

On Friday the children had a great afternoon doing a range of festive activities including craft making, tombolas, tattoos  and name the snowman. Thank you to the PTA for organising and running this.

Week 7

Maths - Statistics

This week in maths children developed their knowledge of tally charts and pictograms. The children took their own surveys and recorded their data in the form of a tally chart to start before turning them into pictograms. The children then looked at other tally charts and pictograms created by other people and answered questions on them to show they understood the data being presented.

PSHE - my body, your body

This week we focussed on the similarities and differences between our bodies and the names of all of our body parts. The children labelled a full size boy and girl outline and discussed reasons for similarities and differences.

English - Portal stories

This week the children edited and published their own portal stories they have created based on Anthony Browne's The Tunnel. The children showed great language choices for the purpose and a good awareness of the reader when writing their stories. These have all been collected and are going to be turned into a book to go in our reading corner.

RE - Incarnation - The birth of Jesus

This week looked at what it means to be special and how the baby born in a stable was depicted as "special" in the bible and through paintings. The Children unpicked the meaning of incarnation and why some Christians believe God came down to Earth as Jesus to save us. 

History - The burning of the fire of London

After making up their own minds of the main reason the fire spread so far, the children were thrown a curve ball when we learnt about how the fire service started in response to the Great Fire of London and considered if the fire would have spread so far if their had been some sort of fire service back in 1666. We also created our own city of London on the playground by laying out our amazing houses we created. We saw how the fire started in the bakery and how easily and quickly the fire started to spread from house to house. Unfortunately, just like the 2nd September 1666, there was a very strong wind which not only helped spread the fire but also caused the houses to blow around so we had to stop our fire early. 

PTA - Christmas Gifts

We would love to say a massive thank you to the PTA who suprised us with amazing Christmas gifts for us. We now have some brand new puzzles and board games for wet play, we have special publishing pencils, we now have build block figurines to go with our models we make during the year as well as having two brand new bean bags for our reading corner.

From all of us in Seahorse class we would like to wish you and your families a very merry Christmas and to wish you all a very happy and healthy new year.