What a busy week the children have had as part of our Commonwealth Games celebrations. The Sponsored Bounce was great fun for all of us and Sports Day was a wonderful event with the children displaying super sports skills as they joined in with all the games activities.
Year 2 scientists
When we visited Ashridge, we found many exciting minibeasts in the woodland and grassland habitats there. As part of our learning in science, on our return to school, we were keen to create a microhabitat at school where we could explore minibeasts every day. Our bug hunts have shown that minibeasts like spaces that are damp, dark and in the shade, and we have had great fun this week finishing off Bugingham Palace, a bug home for all kinds of creatures. We will enjoy finding out what creatures will move into their new home over the next few weeks.
Continuing-to-care-for-our-gardens- 
What-can-you-spot-in-there? 
We-found-worms-and-centipedes-living-in-the-damp 
We-found-more-minibeasts-in-the-microhabitat-under-the-trees-in-the-prayer-garden 
A-glorious-shiny-emerald-green-June-beetle-fascinated-us 
A green June beetle or figeater beetle was the size of a thumbnail. 
We-enjoyed-finding-natural-items-to-add-to-our-bug-home. 
Bugingham-Palace
It was lovely to see so many families visiting school, for our first Open Evening in three years. The children have worked incredibly hard this year and it was a wonderful way to celebrate their amazing learning. Thank you for sharing the evening with us.
Year 2 learn about Shabbat
As part of our whole school learning about our sister faith of Judaism, we took part in a workshop that taught us all we needed to know about the Jewish day of rest called Shabbat. The workshop took us back to our autumn RE, where we had learned that God rested on the seventh day and the Jewish people do this as part of their Shabbat on Friday, going onto Saturday at sunset.
Whole school assembly to launch Judaism Day 
What do you know about Shabbat? 
We will set our table ready for Shabbat. 
We used the yad to read the Torah. 
What do you think about this mystery object? 
We recognised some stories from the Torah. 
Dressed up in a kippah and tallit! 
There were so many kippahs to choose from! 
Can you find the Hebrew ‘C’? 
Hebrew is read from right to left. 
There were so many things to learn! 
We ended our morning with a liturgy.
The children had great fun exploring the Jewish resources, such as the kippar (cap), Torah (religious text), yad (pointing stick) and tallits (prayer shawl) and showed great respect as they learned about this fascinating religion which has so many connections with the Catholic faith. Our morning ended with our own liturgy where we enjoyed grape juice and challah bread, followed by a whole school assembly where we taught the rest of the school a Shabbat song and found out lots of new things from other classes.
Shabbat candles, shabbat candles. Burning bright, burning bright. Challah on the table, challah on the table, it’s Friday night, Friday night.
Year 2 dress up for Queen Elizabeth II
As part of our Platinum Jubilee activities this week, we have created an amazing display to show just how grateful we are to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Thank you Ma’am.
We watched a great cartoon in which Queen Elizabeth’s beautiful hat is blown off her head by a gust of wind. Off trot a loyal guard and a cheeky corgi to see if they can rescue the hat. This was the stimulus for our own stories and our next task was to create a story that told what happens next. We had great fun writing our stories, which showed just how good we are at creative writing, spellings, handwriting and punctuation now! For our maths challenge, we thought about the number 70 and all the different ways we could make 70, using the number skills that we have developed this year.
Click on the link below, if you would like to watch this lovely Platinum Jubilee cartoon at home.
Along with Year 2 children across the nation, throughout the month of May, we have been involved in lots of end of Key Stage practical activities and written assessments to show just how much we have learned during our time in Key Stage One. We have worked very hard and to celebrate our achievements, we all enjoyed a delicious ice lolly together, in the beautiful bee and butterfly garden that we have created.
Year 2 are Guinness World Record Holders!
We love maths every day, but Wednesday was a particularly joyful day, because we were involved in creating a new Guinness World Record as part of an online community of 5362 schools around the country!
The day began with a warm up activity led by Katya Jones, of Strictly Come Dancing fame. That was very exciting, but only the starter as we then joined in with a mass chant focussing on the 5 times table. This was a great way to show that learning times tables can be fun and we were overjoyed when we discovered that enough schools had joined in with the live stream to make a new world record. Throughout the day, we then took part in lots of activities linked to the 2, 5 and 10 times tables. As a finale, we all brought a certificate home to show just how clever we are!
If you would like to join in with the National Numeracy number heroes competition, please follow the link below, where you will find more details: https://www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/number-heroes-competition
Year 2 explore lifecycles
Over the last few weeks, we have been watching the caterpillars in our class change, as they ate and ate, grew bigger and bigger, developed cocoons and then emerged from their chrysalises as beautiful butterflies. We even created a beautiful bee and butterfly garden in our outside area, which the insects will be able to visit when they need to collect nectar and drink. This week, we were overjoyed to let our butterflies go free – some fluttered away straight away, but some brave butterflies stayed close to us for ten minutes, so that we were able to get a really close look at them. Your challenge as you take a look through the photos is to Spot the butterfly!
This week, we planted up the herbs that came into school as part of the Coronation of Mary liturgy. They smell wonderful and we are looking forward to watching the bees and butterflies visit them once they start to flower through the summer. Take a look at our infant gardens as you pass through them to see what you can spot.
May is the month of Mary
Beautiful-flowers-fit-for-a-queen 
The-Annunciation-retold-by-our-Chaplaincy-Team 
Queen-of-the-apostles-by-Reception 
Queen-of-Angels-by-Year-1 
Queen-of-peace-by-Year-2 
Queen-of-All-Saints-by-Year-3 
Queen-assumed-into-heaven-by-Year-4- 
Queen-of-the-Martyrs-by-Year-5 
Year-6-artwork-to-celebrate-Mary-queen-of-the-most-holy-rosary 
Year-4-get-ready-to-dance-around-the-may-pole 
Dancing-The-Barbers-Pole 
Year-4-dance-with-style
During our May Day liturgy, the Chaplaincy Team led us as we gave thanks for Mary, the mother of Jesus. All the children created a poster that celebrated Mary’s role as Queen and these have been used as a prayer focus for all the classes. Thank you so much for all the amazing plant donations that have been used to really show how deep our thanks is to Mary. Our service ended with a tremendous May Pole dance by Year 4.
Year 2 love to read!
We are all overjoyed to finally receive our set of new reading books. Here we are, juggling with five books each – it was trickier than we thought to hold the books out and look at the camera at the same time! We shall enjoy reading them at home along with a library book that we choose from our Top 50 reads for Year 2. There are so many books to choose from!
In preparation for our May Day liturgy, we wrote prayers asking for help as we try to keep the peace in our own lives. Here are our beautiful Mary, Queen of Peace posters that we were very proud to show everyone in school. Thank you so much for contributing such wonderful plants for our floral display. We shall enjoy planting and caring for them and then watching them grow across the next few months.
Year 2 keep fit
We have kept ourselves very fit this week and enjoyed running the Golden Mile. We learned that if we run around the junior field eight times, we will have run a mile. Well done to all of the children who challenged themselves to keep running as far as they could. The children also enjoyed the wonderful new playground markings and each day, it is great to see them developi all kinds of fun and imaginative games to keep themselves active! Added to this, the children were very pleased to go to the swimming pool again this week and it was brilliant to see how any initial nerves from the first visit had disappeared and the children were super excited! What great resilience, everyone!
We have been learning about life cycles, so it has been wonderful this week to see chicks hatch out of their eggs and listen to their sweet tweetings. As part of this learning, the children have created slide presentations that show animal life cycles. The children have worked hard to learn how to insert images, shapes and text boxes and organise where they are on the page, so that the slide shows the life cycle clearly. It has been wonderful to see the children’s computing skills develop across the week. When they are next on the Googleclassroom, ask your child to show your their lifecycles, which can be found in the Year 2 Classwork section.
Alleluia, he is risen! Happy Easter everyone.
This week, we have celebrated Earth Day, St George’s Day and attended swimming lessons for the first time as a class.
St-Georges-Day-dressed-in-red-and-white 
On Earth-Day-we-created-a-drinking-station-for-the-bees-and-butterflies 
For Earth Day, we-planted-lots-of-bee-and-butterfly-friendly-plants 
Here we are in the dark, ready for our Light and Dark workshop. 
Alex-helps to teach-us-about-the-earth-and-the-sun. 
We had fun exploring mirrors and torches. 
We-reflected-light-off-a-mirror. and onto different surfaces. 
We made kaleidoscopes in our Light and Dark workshop. 
Swimming superstars!
On Earth Day, the children had a fun science workshop and learned about the topic of Light and Dark. We had a great day and also set up one of our flower beds to make it bee and butterfly friendly. We have planted plants that will have lots of nectar for the insects to collect and created a watering station for the bees and butterflies. As part of our Christian mission to look after the earth, we will make every day Earth Day and care for our garden over the next term. As you pass the garden, please keep a look out for the plants growing and see if you can spot any insects arriving at their new feeding and drinking station.
The children were brilliant when we went for our first class swimming lesson this week. It was a wonderful trip as the coach journey was just as exciting as the swimming. Well done to all of you!
Please take a look at the Year 2 Quicklink to find out about this half term’s learning in RE.