Richard Heywood

For English on Monday we looked at a riddle about a strawberry.  We then chose a minibeast and were resourceful in researching our minibeasts, using books and ipads.  We needed lots of information and facts about our minibeasts so that we could make our own What Am I riddles.

We also drew pictures of our minibeasts and today we illustrated our riddles, which will be on display in our corridor.

In maths we have been learning about money and how to add to sums of money together.  We partitioned the numbers to help us add them.

43p + 25p  = 68p

10+10+10+10              10+10                    60p

1+1+1                             1+1+                        8p

For science we investigated which parts of a plant we can eat and were surprised at how many different bits we can eat.  For example we eat stems when we eat asparagus, fruit when we eat pepper, leaves when we eat bay leaves and the root when we eat carrots!  We also learnt about the different parts of a plant and what they do.

In art we have painted different fruit, vegetables, flowers and birds and mice to put in our ‘Mr McGregor’s Garden’ display.  We looked very carefully at the detail on the plants and animals and tried to make our paintings as accurate as possible.

For the beginning of this term we have had two art days.  On Monday we stayed in our own classroom and we sketched flowers.  We then took pictures of the flowers using the ipads.  When we had a picture we liked we zoomed in and did a screen shot.  We then printed these out and used them to paint flowers in the style of Georgia O’Keefe.  She was an American artist who painted lots of big flowers, but they were always bigger then the canvas to create beautiful paintings.

In maths this week we have been looking at odd and even numbers to remind ourselves what they look like.  We remembered that we cannot share odd numbers equally between two.  We discovered that when we add two odd numbers or two even numbers together they always make an even number.  We then looked at missing numbers in number sentences.  The missing number can be anywhere in the sum, at the beginning, at the end or in the middle.

In English we have been reading The Scarecrows’ Wedding, by Julia Donaldson.  We have been writing sentences using conjunctions to join two small sentences together.

‘You can come to our wedding if you give us a feather.’

Harry O’Hay went to collect pink flowers, but he needed water.’

Also in art we have been creating our own scarecrows using various materials to make them as realistic as possible.

In English this week we boxed up some non-fiction writing about made up animals making sure that the information was under the correct sub-heading. (Amber)

In DT (Design and Technology) we designed African masks using lots of different colours and suggestions for what we could make them out of.  The masks were animals, humans or a mixture of the two.  On Thursday we started making our masks using all the different materials that we had used in our designs.

On Wednesday we had an exciting and fun-filled Science Day.  In year Two we examined poo !! (it was fake).  We were looking at the poo to see if we could tell why there were different types of poo.  We looked at meat eaters – Carnivores, plant eaters – Herbivores, and animals that eat meat and plants – Omnivores.  We decided that the animals’ poo that we were looking at were a tiger (carnivore), and elephant (herbivore) and a badger (omnivore).  We also did different experiments in different year groups.  We investigated how our hands felt in different temperature water and how to keep water warm with different materials.  When we went in to the Forest Area we made dens and had to try to make them waterproof.  Mrs Newman poured water over them to test how waterproof they were!

In maths this week we have been learning all about fractions and how to find a fraction of a two digit number by sharing.

We have been resilient practising our take away (subtraction) by using an empty number line.  We have been taking 10 away and then other two digit numbers from numbers in to the 100s. (Esme)

In topic we were curious and looked at different  resources to find out what Captain Scott and his team would have worn, eaten, taken with them and what they did in the South Pole.  (Eden H) They studied Penguin eggs because they wanted to find out if penguins are related to dinosaurs.  This is called Zoology (Fin.)

On Wednesday we went on a school trip to Cambridge to the Botanical Gardens and the Polar Institute.  We looked at different glasshouse with a variety of climates.  The mountain glasshouse was cold and the desert was dangerous because it had lots of spiky plants in it.  (Alyssa). The Rainforest glasshouse was huge and hot and damp.  It had some lovely plants in it, a Bird of Paradise and a Strangler Fig.

At the Polar Institute we learnt more about Captain Scott and his team who explored the South Pole.  We looked around the museum and filled in a sheet showing what they would have packed to take with them. (Ben McG.)  We also saw a Polar Bear skin.

In English we wrote a recount of our trip to Cambridge which was a very busy and exciting day.