Year 2 had a look at this blog today. It is a great way to look at the topic and remember the key facts of the topic!
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Investigating Vehicles
In our DT lessons we are working towards making a fire engine! We are at the very start of the project at the moment, investigating existing products. Today, we looked closely at small wheeled vehicles to find out more about how they work.
Poetry Assembly
On Friday 3rd March Toucans performed spectacularly well in our Poetry Assembly!
Well done everyone!
Great Fire of London Workshop
Set in 1666 with the plague and the great fire…..fleas, no toilets, thousands of wooden buildings, rats galore. The children had fun learning about life in 1666.
We learnt that the fire started in Pudding Lane in a bakery. It was a narrow lane with houses very close together.
We could hear horses and church bells in Pudding Lane. The children brought Pudding Lane to life with its warehouse filled with flammable things, washers, fish sellers (very smelly), fruit sellers, children playing hopscotch and skipping as well as the bakery (with the oven).
Then on the fateful day of September 2nd 1666….
Just after midnight a spark leapt out of the oven, maybe because the oven door was not shut properly, and because the bakery was made of wood….it caught alight. So did the surrounding houses. It spread through London as the wind also blew it.
The fire lasted 4 days.
Some people managed to escape the fires by getting to the river Thames and getting on a boat.
Samuel Peyps was an eyewitness. He saw the fire and wrote about it. He would write his diary, but he would write in code.
His diary said his servants told him about the fire, when he saw it from their window, he thought it was a long way away, so he went back to bed!
When he realized hundreds of houses had burnt down, he was worried his would also burn. So he went to see the king. King Charles II. He told him to pull down some buildings to make a fire break. When Samuel told the Lord Mayor to pull down some houses, he said “No” because he didn’t think it was that serious. What a mistake that was.
The people had to fill leather buckets and pass them along to put the fires out. That was very hard, they used hoses too. They even tried to pull houses down themselves. Eventually the king ordered the use of gunpowder to bring buildings down and stop the fire. Eventually it stopped.
100 thousand people lost their homes in the great fire.
Christopher Wren was asked to design and re-build lots of new buildings around London.
Now houses are made of bricks, roads are wider and we have fire fighters in case of fires.
Authors
Over the last few weeks, Toucans have been working extremely hard on producing their own books! They enjoyed reading books by Hans deBeer about the character of Lars the polar bear. They have now written their own stories using Lars as their main character. They drafted their story, edited, improved and then finally published it – just like real authors do!
Toucans took their books into our Reception class and read them to our Swans. Swans really enjoyed looking at their illustrations and hearing their stories.
Well done Toucans – you should feel very proud of yourselves.
Money, Money, Money!
Our new topic in maths is money and this week we have been very busy brushing up on our skills! We have used coins to make amounts in different ways and next week we will learn more about combining amounts and giving change.
Publishing Books
This term, Toucans have thoroughly enjoyed reading Hans deBeer’s books about the little polar bear called Lars. This week they finished writing their own book about Lars which they then worked hard to edit and improve. They then published their story into a book and illustrated it. They were extremely proud of the results! Even more exciting news is that next week we are going to read them to our Reception class.
Well done Toucans – you have worked so hard!
Factual Texts
In our reading lessons we have been learning about sequencing and summarising. As part of this unit of work, we explored features of factual books. We learnt that not all factual book have these features but many of them have at least a few.
Computing
In our Computing lessons we have enjoyed using Purple Mash. There are so many games to play, books to read and learning tools to use!
Role-Playing Conversations
In English this week we have been reading books about a little polar bear called Lars. Lars is a mischievous little bear who always goes on a journey and ends up having adventures! Today we role played a conversation he might have had with his friend Hugo the hare. We had some excellent ideas for what they might have said to each other. Some of us were even brave enough to perform for the rest of the class.
Well done Toucans!
