Year Two Reach Out For Refugees

Monday was our St Albans wide Reach Out for Refugees Day. We read the very poignant story of Lubna and Pebble and reflected on how difficult it must be to leave the place, people and possessions that you love.

As part of our English learning on the book ‘If all the world were …’, we have each written a poem and here is our very thoughtful class poem, which includes a verse from every member of the class.

If all the world were …

If all the world were scary, I would hug, hug and hug until the scary darkness was gone.
If all the world were poor, I would welcome the poor into my cosy house.
If all the world were awful, I would pick a red, shiny rose and smell it so I try and forget about it.
If all the world were hideous I’d suck it up and fill it with happiness.
If all the world were darkness, I would light the world up.
If all the world were poor I would give everyone a home.
If all the world were wonderless, I would hug my family.
By The Amazing Alligators

If all the world were …

If all the world were sorrowful, I would give away my teddy bear.

If all the world were poor, I would fly to them to give them a blanket to sleep with and some more money.

If all the world were empty, I would give the poor love.

If all the world were full of worry, I would bring some people to the sandy, windy beach to see the sun set.

If all the world were sad, I would give people my teddies.

If all the world were unhappy, I would give people my shiny money.

By The Fabulous Foxes

Blue and Yellow to mark Reach out for refugees Day

If all the world were …

If all the world were death and destruction, I would fill it up with love.
If all the world were sad, I would give away my teddies.
If all the world were full of poor people, I would give them medicine.
If all the world were selfish, I’d stand up for people.
If all the world were scary, I would give people my teddy.
If all the world were miserable, I would try to cheer people up and make a better place.
By The Marvellous Monkeys

If all the world were …

If all the world were horrible, I would give someone a great, red and beautiful rose.

If all the world were empty, I would fill the world with love.

If all the world were war, I would give them a home.

If all the world were poor, I would empty my money box for charity.

If all the world were worrying, I would tell people that they’re the winners.

If all the world were painful, I would wrap my lovely sisters, mummy and daddy in a warm blanket.

By The Wonderful Wolves

What an amazingly creative and talented group of poets we have in Year Two!

If you would like to hear the story of Lubna and Pebble again, then follow the link below to hear it read by the author herself.

Science Week – all about Growing

Over the last ten weeks, we have been measuring the growth of our amaryllis bulbs, so we used Science week as an opportunity to review and compare each group’s plant. It has been very exciting to see these bulbs growing so quickly.

We are also very lucky to have had a mystery parcel arrive and inside we discovered five tiny caterpillars. We have been researching the life cycles of different animals this week and over the next few weeks, we will be watching animals grow in school, so watch this space so that we can tell you more!

Alessia said that it must be something very special inside as the box says ‘Fragile’ on it.
We opened the box very carefully.
Inside, we found five tiny caterpillars. They are eating up the layer of food at the bottom of the pot and we will watch them to see how they change. It is exciting!

The caterpillars are already starting to grow quickly and we are watching them carefully to see when they start to spin their cocoons.

Five ways to Wellbeing in Year 2

Keep learning

To start our Wellbeing workshop this week, we thought about all the wonderful things we have enjoyed learning in Year 2. We talked about the poetry we have been writing in English, learning about Walter Tull in history, exploring concentric circles with Wassily Kandinsky in Art and Design as well as division in maths.It makes us feel very proud when we learn new things. One very wise comment was ‘Sometimes, we need to learn things to keep us safe’. We thought about how learning new things will help us when we choose what job we would like as an adult. Maybe we will be a police officer, singer, vet, doctor, zookeeper (in an aquarium) or even a teacher!

Be active

We all know how important it is to keep ourselves active so that we feel healthy and happy. We brainstormed a huge list of ways in which we can keep ourselves from ballet or Beavers to fencing, cheerleading or football. These activities will all help to brighten our day.

Give

Henry said that we should try to be kind and that giving things to other people also makes us feel good too. The children had lots of ideas for Mother’s Day gifts that they could give to their mum, which won’t cost any money, but would be lovely to share, such as home made cakes and cards, breakfast in bed, lots of hugs or flowers from the garden!.

What have you enjoyed learning this year?
Keeping active is fun!
Watch us jump in the air!
Give an act of kindness says Roisin every day.
May wrote a great list of different ways in which you can Connect, Give, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Be Active.
Harry’s top tips for good mental health.
Look at Harper’s wonderful examples of ways in which you can improve your wellbeing.
We have had a wonderful week opening up all the parcels filled with library books. Thank you to everyone!

The children are very proud of the way in which they have given books to the class library for everyone to share. Thank you so, so much to everyone for your very kind donations. Follow this link if you would like to buy a book for our class library: Year 2 library books

Connect

Chatting with each other, giving one another compliments and learning something new about a classmate are all ways in which we can connect with our friends. This is a wonderful way to help us feel good about ourselves and also help our friends to feel great too. It is important to believe in ourselves and one another!

Take notice

We all have negative thoughts and we learned how taking the time to notice other things instead will help us to make sure that these thoughts don’t become overwhelming. We tried some different techniques to help us focus on the present and enjoy the moment rather than letting unhappy thoughts overwhelm us. Next time, we are filled with negative thoughts, we will breathe in for 5 seconds and then out for 5 seconds and then try to play the 5 senses game where we think about …

5 things we can see, 4 things we can hear, 3 things we can touch, 2 things we can smell and 1 thing that we can taste.

Once we’ve thought about all those things, we hope that our worries will feel less overwhelming. Why not try this strategy at home when you need to?

Bore Da from Year 2!

The children had a double celebration on Tuesday as it was Shrove Tuesday as well as St David’s Day. We are blessed as a class as we have children from very diverse backgrounds, including children with families from Wales. It was wonderful to see children dressed in the green, red and white colours of the Welsh flag. April even took part in our assembly by teaching the whole school how to say Good Morning in Welsh.

Red, green and white colours and beautiful daffodils to celebrate Saint David’s Day
Our inspiring Lenten Promise display
A class liturgy to reflect on our lenten promises

To mark the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday, the children were inspired by the story of Saint David to write their own Lenten promises. The children’s promises range from praying each day, donating money to charity instead of eating chocolate and keeping their bedrooms tidy. The children enjoyed making their own daffodils and used these as part of a thoughtful class liturgy led by Scarlett, Cian and Athina. These Lenten promise daffodils are now beautifully displayed and they are certainly brightening up the classroom, just like the children.

World Book Day characters
‘Sharing books is fun’
‘We enjoyed recommending a book to someone new’.
‘It was great to spend time with someone that we don’t normally see’
Making new friends
Just look how well the children are concentrating as they share their favourite books!

To end the week, the children showed great imagination in smashing costumes that celebrate their love of reading. It was lovely to see how the children enjoyed sharing their favourite books with a reading partner from year 4. The challenge at the start of the day was to publish our own class book and the children wrote some wonderful poems in the style of Edward Lear’s poem ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’. As part of World Book Day, we have been rejuvenating the class book library, which now includes some great book labels and bookmarks created by the children.

The children would love to start bringing home some high quality books to share with their parents and if you would like to order a book for our library, please click on this link: Year 2 wishlist. So that your generous donation will always be celebrated, a book plate with your child’s name will be added to the book before it is added to the library!

Thoughtful crosses

This week, the children have been learning about the story of the Last Supper, as told in the gospel of Matthew. They created some beautiful crosses with signs and symbols that are important to them.. It was lovely to hear how thoughtful the children had been as they created their beautiful crosses. Well done everyone.

The bulbs that we planted in January are beginning to grow very quickly. We are looking forward to seeing them flower!

To end the week, we have also started to learn how to do English country dancing. Photos will follow when we can tell our left from our right hands and have perfected clapping, skipping, chassaying, promenading and do-si-doing in time to the music. That’s not as easy as it sounds!

Wellbeing in the playground

As part of Mental Health Week as well as our learning in science and RSE, we have been thinking about the different ways in which we can keep our mind and body healthy. We know how important play is to our wellbeing, so we have been planning how we can use the playground as a space where we can keep fit and build our friendships as we share books, draw pictures and have fun together.

We created a wish list and have been using our Cake Sale money to buy some more things that we can use in the playground together. We have bought lots of new balls, outdoor games and cars for the picnic table as well as a feast of felt tip pens that we will enjoy drawing with. We will post some more photos when all of these things arrive!

Numbers are fun

We have had a fun filled day raising money for the NSPCC and also celebrating numbers. We learned more about the 5x table and also used stopwatches and counting to see how many actions we could do in a minute. This was a great way to see how we use numbers in science, PE and maths!

This week, we have also been taste testing lots of different foods as we explored the Eatwell Plate and considered what combinations of food would be healthy as well as tasty. We are looking forward to designing and making our own wraps next!

Bible stories are us!

In our RE topic, we celebrated the bible and immersed ourselves in our favourite stories. We created some amazing posters that showed just how much we have been inspired by the bible. We reflected on how the stories told in the bible help us to make better choices.

As part of the topic, we had great fun learning about the baptism of Jesus. We created a story map to help us to tell the story and then acted out the story in teams. Can you work out who is taking on the role of storyteller, John the Baptist or Jesus?

Happy New Year from Year 2

It is lovely to have the children back in school. We have been finishing off our art topic inspired by Wassily Kandinsky’s Squares with Concentric Circles. We showed how good we are at mixing paint to create our own colours and then designed concentric circles patterns using warm or cool colours, which we painted onto our clay pots. We have explored a variety of media including paints, oil pastels, clay and pens and had great fun in the process!

We learned about mixing primary colours to make secondary colours. Primary colours are red, blue and yellow. Secondary colours are green, purple and orange. By May,
We learned to use powder paint, pens, clay and oil pastels in our artwork. By Gigi
We have learned that warm colours are red, orange, pink and yellow and the cooler colours are light blue, dark blue and purple. By Harper S
We have learned about Wassily Kandinsky’s painting called Squares with Concentric Circles. By Harry
We have learned that Wassily Kandinsky was a very good artist. By Alessia
We have learned to do concentric circles with colours.
We have learned that Wassily Kandinsky made artwork that had colours that go together well. By Mia Grace

Thank you so very much for my lovely Christmas presents.
I wish you all a very happy and healthy 2022 and look forward to our time in school, learning and having fun together.

RE in Year 2

For the first four weeks of spring we will focus on the theme of Books.

Key words for the topic are:

Scripture, lectern, Gospel, Bible, New Testament, Old Testament, genre, thurible, missal, Church, parish family

In particular, discuss the meaning of the words thurible and missal. When you visit church together, see if you can find the church thurible or missal to talk about with your child.

We will be considering the big question Why do we need books?

The children will read Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 3; 13-17) to find out about the Baptism of Jesus.

RE home learning

Let’s enjoy reading the bible: Share stories from the bible with your child. Talk about stories that are particularly important to you. What stories are important to your child? Create a poster about this story that can be shared in class. Concentrate on the presentation of your posters as it would be lovely to make them into our own class book!

Please return your posters by 19.01.22.