Year 2 – St Teresa of Calcutta – Page 2 – St Adrian's Catholic Primary School

All through the year, the Year 2 children have shown that they are avid readers. They have thoroughly enjoyed choosing books from our library, learned poems to recite to the class and devoured non fiction books linked to popular topics such as The Great Fire of London, lifecycles and favourite artists.

Over the holiday, the children will not be bringing home books from school, so this is an ideal chance to visit your local library and join their library challenge. The children will find a huge selection of books to choose from and earn stickers, a certificate and even a medal as a reward for their holiday reading. You will find out more here: https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/news-and-campaigns/summer-reading-challenge.aspx

Year Two get sporty

This week, we had a wonderful time preparing for our sports day on Thursday. We learned how to do a relay race and were also guided by the Year Five children as they taught us how to compete in the obstacle race as well as develop our javelin throwing skills, among other things! Sports Day was tremendous fun; we all showed great sportsmanship and supported one another to do our very best. The morning finished with a delicious lolly, provided by the PTA, so we say a great big THANK YOU to them.

Hoop and ball chase
Potato and spoon race
Obstacle race
How good is your aim?
Bean bag hunt
Time for a well earned lolly.

Year 2 reflect with Father Francis

We love to spend time in worship and prayer and we were very pleased to celebrate the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul with Father Francis. We all had our own lines to say in this liturgy which reminded us of the important role that these saints played in the early church. Reading from the letter of Paul to the Colossians reminded us that we must try to show our love for one another in our actions and words and we filled the room with our beautiful singing when we joined in with our favourite hymns, A New Commandment, Follow Me and Magic Penny. Father Francis reflected on the lives of Saints Peter and Paul and led us in prayer.

The flowers on display describe how Jesus is alive in each and every one of us in the way that we treat one another, read the bible, go to church and say our prayers.

Year 2 are historians!

This week, we reinforced our learning in history with a day long series of activities focussing on the Great Fire of London. We all looked tremendous dressed up in our 17th century outfits and our teacher for the day, Mistress Sophie taught us many things about how people lived 350 years ago. As the day progressed, we learned more about how the fire developed and what the people of London would have done to try and stop the fire. During the afternoon, we explored artefacts collected from the fire, and considered what they told us about the owner and their life.

We-used-the-ink-we-made-to-write-our-own-messages
Leather working using leather, a nail and a hammer
Making our own bread
We had fun catching those pesky rats!
Using a hammer and nail was great fun when creating a pattern on a piece of leather.
Using a pestle and mortar to grind down dried flowers
Creating our own ink
We used the ink that we had created to write our own message.
Leather work
Weaving was tricky
In 1666, people thought that you could cure a headache if you put a rope on your head!
Collecting water from the River Thames
Passing buckets of water to put out the fire.
Using firehooks to pull down a building.
We looked at a huge map of London and tracked the movement of the fire.
We were archeologists and talked about our findings.
At the end of the day, even though we were tired, we were still ready to find out more about the Great Fire of London.

We could not have run the day without the support of ten tremendous adults from Year 2 and Year 3 and we are very grateful for their invaluable help and enthusiasm. Thank you!

Year 2 love habitats

Inspired by the story ‘The Journey Home’, about an orangutan, panda bear, elephant and polar bear who have sadly had to leave their own home because it has been destroyed by the actions of humans, we are exploring habitats around the world.

This research has continued at home, where the children have shown amazing creativity and ingenuity when designing and making a shoebox habitat that reflects their interest a particular habitat.

You are warmly invited to our Open Evening on Wednesday, when much of our learning will be on display for you all to see.

Year 2 explore habitats at Rye Meads

The Year 2 children all had a wonderful visit to RSPB Rye Meads. The rain kept away and we were rewarded with lots of minibeasts in a range of habitats including woodland, meadow and pond. The children had many questions and the air was filled with excited voices as the children found so many interesting creatures. A fabulous time was had by all and we are very grateful for all of the parents who accompanied us on the trip as we could not have gone without you! Scroll through the photos to see just how eager to learn we are!

Four lesser spotted waterboatmen!
The identification sheets were really useful to find out what we had found.
We collected minibeasts with legs using a brush
We used a spoon to collect wet minibeasts
Sweeping the grass using nets

Year 2 get active!

As part of our PE, Science and Maths, we have been learning about Time and how many different movements we can do in a minute. We had great fun using stopwatches to time ourselves and have got really good at press ups, star jumps, squats, jump rope as well as jumping and hopping. Scroll through the photos to see us in action …

Star jumps are great fun!
Let’s see how many jumps we can do in 60 seconds.
Ready to squat?
Press ups are harder than I thought!
Let’s jump rope our way around the playground!
How many squats can you do in a minute?

Year 2 give thanks to Mary, Queen of Peace

Along with the rest of the school, the children enjoyed taking part in a liturgy to celebrate Mary, the mother of God. They wrote prayers for Mary, Queen of Peace and created a beautiful display to be used as part of this worship. The children worked really hard on the presentation of their peace doves and it is lovely to see them taking such pride in their learning.

Year 2 care for their environment

We have been learning about the impact of plastic pollution on the environment as part of our learning in science and geography this year. We read a very interesting book called A Planet Full of Plastic by Neal Layton and you can find out more by watching his great video.

We are all stewards of the world around us and we have enjoyed litter picking in the school playground to ensure that it is safe for us and the animals that we share it with. We have learned a great song reminding us ‘Don’t drop litter, put it in the bin. Let’s keep our playground tidy, neat and clean so don’t drop litter, put it in the bin’. If you see one of us in passing, we will be very happy to sing it to you.

As part of our learning about plastic pollution, we have learned that the most important thing to do is to try and reduce the amount of plastic that we use, especially single use plastic and we are very pleased to use a refillable drinks bottle everyday and make sure that our daily snack comes in a plastic re-useable pot, rather a new plastic wrapper or bag every day. We can all do our own bit to help this precious planet. Remember …

Year Two get creative

As part of our learning in Art and Design, we have been exploring butterflies in art. We explored the artwork of milliner, Philip Treacy who created a tremendous headpiece filled with butterflies made out of painted turkey feathers.

We were inspired by Philip Treacy’s artwork and had a go for ourselves. Just look at our wonderful class creation!

Our mannequin is ready to go!
We enjoyed building up our headpiece with butterflies we had created.
We need more butterflies, so …
Let’s add some more.
We are very proud of our finished work of art.