Stanningley Primary School

Our D & T this half term is Textiles. We have been reading the story of Stickman and some of us noticed that The Stickman Family didn't have any Christmas Stockings handing from the fire place. We all talked about it and thought it would be a good idea to use our D & T sessions to design and make them one. We began by looking at a few different stocking that have been on sale in the shops. We even talked about a using a real sock. We all then designed our own stocking for Stickman's Family. We needed to ensure it wasn't too big or too small. We all thought that the stocking should be big enough to fit a small chocolate bar. We designed them in our sketch books and then had a discussion about how we were going to cut out the fabric. After a little discussion, we came up with the idea of making a template. Many of us used a ruler and measured our lines for the template.

We have continued to investigate everyday materials. We are now finding out how the shapes of solid objects made from some materials can be changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching. We have had whole class discussion about a variety of materials and their uses. We then chose our science question to investigate. Can all materials changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching? We then planned the investigation and collect all the things we would need. We talked about it being a fair test. We all talked about our previous experiment with every day materials and remembered how to make a fair test. We had great fun completing the experiment.

We have been lucky enough to have the Road Safety Team visit us to help us with our Keeping Safe Topic. Harriet and James started the day with a whole school assembly. It was so much fun. We have learned the Green Cross Code. We know that we need to Think, Stop, Look and Listen before we cross the road. Harriet and Mrs Lofthouse took out a group of children at a time to look at the road and practice what we have been learning.

We have begun looking at the United Kingdom. We have named the four countries and found and labeled the capital cities of those countries. We have talked about the differences and similarities of cities, towns and villages. We know that in the cities there are lots of high buildings and big shops. In the towns they have some shops. In the villages they have older looking buildings and litte streams and only a few shops. It is much quieter in the villages. We have now begun to look at the characteristics of these countries. We are beginning with England and Scotland. We have had a discussion about what we aready know about these countries. Some people knew that London had the Kings house. We used the iPads to research other features like rivers, mountains,beaches and coastlines.

We had gret fun wearing our odd socks. We all sat in a circle in our socks and talked about why we choose these socks. We found out that we all wear different socks some with pictures, some with patterns and some with stripes. Everyone of us had different socks on. It showed we are all differt.

The whole school listened to an assembly about why we remember the 11th November. To give thanks to all fallen soldiers all over the world who have lost their lives in battle. We all stood for 2 minutes silence on Friday at 11.00am and in the afternoon we made our own poppies.

In Black History we have been learning about a lady called Mary Seacole. She was a nurse who went to the Crimean War to help the wounded soldiers. We have linked our art skills with our history topic and painted our own portraits of Mary Seacole. We only had primary colours to work with, So we needed to use the mixing skills we have already learned. We then used white and black to add tint and tone to our portraits. Do you like them? PICTURES COMING SHORTLY

This half term we have been focusing on our Personal cog. Keeping trying and challenging ourselves to be better at everything we do, not just PE. In our PE unit the children have been developing and applying their footwork and one leg balance through focused skill development sessions, cooperative and competitive games. We have had lots of fun and games.

We have been learning about an Artist called Michelle Jursa. She lives in North American. She loved to paint as a young girl. She soon realised that when she had finished her work she had more paint on her fingers than the canvase. So she began to paint with her fingers, this enabled her to add texture as she painted. These are some of her paintings. In year 2 we have also been learning how to mix primary and secondary colours. So today we have experimented and now we can mix primary colours to make brown. We used red,blue and yellow. We used our colour knowledge to paint trees like Michelle\'s. We were only given the primary colours. Do you like our paintings?

Year 2 had a lovely time at the Macmillan coffee morning. We all brought our money to buy a bun. We sat an had a special time chatting with our friends. Some of our parents managed to come along to join us. Many of our mums also helped out at the event. We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone involved.

In science we have begun to look at everyday materials. We have been identified and named some everyday materials. We have talked about their uses and why we think is a suitable material for that use and what would not be suitable for a particular object. i.e ‘Paper would not be good to make a coat from as it would just go soggy in the rain’. ‘A chocolate tea pot, would melt’. We have talked to our friends and been around school to gather and record some information about the different everyday materials. We can all name a variety of everyday materials and say what some of them can be used for.

We have begun our Autumn 1 topic, Using a range of materials creatively to design and make products. We firstly all had a chat and thought about paint and colour. Some of the children had some great ideas about this , we made a little thought shower and even recited the mnomonic Richard of York, to remember the colours of the rainbow. Some of the children had remembered Year 1 learning and could name some or all of the primary colours. A few of children could even say some of the colours in the secondary range. We then went on to create our own colour wheel. We needed to think carefully about which colours to mix together to ensure we made the correct secondary colours. We now all know that we need to mix red with yellow to make orange. We mix yellow with blue to make green and we mix blue with red to make purple. We were very proud of our colour wheels. Do you like them?

We have had a great start to Year 2. We have had time to welcome all our old and new friends. We have had time to discover new things in the new classroom and also outside in the playground. In our reading this half term , we will be looking at the author Julia Donaldson. We have read the book Paper Dolls and talked about it. We made links with other books we have read. Then we use strips of paper to create our own paper doll chain. Some of our chains turned out a little different to what we had expected. We had fun using our folding and cutting skills.