Making Cushions

DT
Year 2 have been working incredibly hard in DT designing and making their own cushions. They were asked to design a decorative cushion with a shape and sequins or buttons. Once they had cut the fabric into the correct shapes they then used a running stich to sew the cushion together. 
 
These cushions will be coming with us to Year 3 to use in the book corner in our classroom.

Marvellous Maths

Maths

This week in Maths, Toucans are focusing on developing a rapid recall of their times table facts.

Today they were practising the 10 times table and everyone was an expert by the end of the lesson – all the way up to 12 x 10!

Managing Information

Computing

Today Toucans learned about how we can manage online information. We watched a video from the National Online Safety website and then had a class discussion. 

Here are our ideas:

What can we use laptops for?

  • Sending emails
  • Keeping in touch with friends and family
  • Finding answers to questions
  • Finding new facts
  • Using Swiggle to search for information

We then thought about possible dangers and what the solutions might be:

Potential danger: Evelyn – Using FaceTime or Zoom you could be bullied by an unexpected person.

Solution: Ryan – You can block them and make sure an adult is with you

Potential danger: Thomas S – Viruses

Solution: Edey – You could delete the game.  Salaf – You could tell a parent.

Potential danger: Using Roblox

Solution: Olivia – You can switch off the chat or always make sure an adult is with you.

We then discussed how our safest option for searching the internet is Swiggle. This search engine has even more protection for children. We discussed some places we had been to and how we could use Swiggle to find out more about these places.

Salaf – New York

Brooke – Wales

Eason – Japan and I was born in Hong Kong

Juwayriya – New York

Evelyn – Greece

Edey – Columbia

We decided next week to use what we had learned about managing information to research these places using Swiggle.

Gender

PSHE
In PSHE, Toucans have been discussing gender and the similarities and differences between girls and boys. 
 
Everyone was given a card and asked to discuss a stereotype about girls or boys and whether it was right to believe these or wrong. 

Twycross Zoo

Class Work, Geography, PSHE

On Friday 17th June Y2 went on an amazing trip to the zoo! The weather was beautiful – the sun shone all day long for us. We had a special lesson in the classroom first linked to our topic about rainforests. We made our own rainforest and put in the animals that live there.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the tapirs as their enclosure is being moved. However, we did get to see all the different sorts of monkeys we have been learning about in our rainforest topic.

We also saw meerkats, penguins, tigers, rhinos, giraffes and many more animals!

We had a picnic under a shady tree at lunchtime which we really enjoyed.

In the afternoon we went on a Gruffalo hunt! It was amazing! We heard the story of the Gruffalo and even met some of the animals in it too.

We were very tired out on the coach home. Some of us even managed a sneaky little nap! What a wonderful day we had!

 

Science
This week in science we continued our work with materials. We were set another task by Professor Pole! He wanted us to choose the most suitable material he could use for his umbrella. He told us it must be waterproof and not absorbent. 
 
We discussed the idea of a fair test – a test where’s only one variable is changed while all the other variables are kept the same. We established the thing that would change in our experiments would be our materials.
 
We tested fabric (felt), tissue paper, paper towels, cardboard and a plastic bag. We made our predictions first just by feeling the materials that might be the most suitable for an umbrella. 
 
We worked in our table groups and tested all the materials using water. At the end of the experiment we came back together to discuss what we found out. We found out that the best material Professor Pole could use would be the plastic bag because it is waterproof and all the other materials were absorbent… pointless for an umbrella! 

 

Materials

Science

This week the Toucans have been learning about different types of materials. They have been identifying and comparing  glass, plastic, metal, brick, rock, paper and cardboard. To start with, they were given a range of different everyday objects to explore as a table group. They were encouraged to discuss the uses of the different objects and to see if they could sort them into different groups. Each group then shared their findings with the rest of the class. 

Toucans were then encouraged to re-sort the materials to see how many different groups they could make.  Miss Hookes asked the children why certain objects were made with certain materials, for example why wouldn’t table legs be made of cardboard? Why are our classroom chairs made of plastic and metal? Why are windows made of glass? The children were then asked to share their thoughts. Toucans then went around the classroom to spot different objects made with each of the various materials and recorded these independently.

Miss Hookes also introduced the Rocket Words: flexible, rigid, smooth and rough.

 

Special Events

PSHE

Today in PSHE we were learning about why we celebrate special events with different foods. As a class we created a list of different special events where we might eat food. We came up with Christmas, Easter, Birthdays and Eid.

We made a mind map together about different foods we eat to celebrate these special events. We discussed why these foods are only eaten at certain times and the children said ‘Well, if you had an Easter egg all the time it wouldn’t be special when you get one at Easter!’ This is exactly right, if we eat all the foods we celebrate special events with then they won’t be as special anymore and we won’t appreciate them. We need to enjoy them when the time to celebrate our special event comes.