Stanningley Primary School

What a fantastic day we all had at Lotherton Hall. Class 2 travelled in a luxury coach to Lotherton. The weather was kind to us all day. We did so many things and the time went so fast. We had some lovely walks, sat in the deer hide, looked through the bird hide, saw small creatures in the pond. Stopped for photos. We looked at the chapel and the big house. We were all very excited to visit the park. We had great fun in there. Then we ate our lovely picnic on the grass and chatted to our friends. After that it was time for a guided tour around the Wild Life World. The penguins and the Tapir were amazing. We saw some fantastic birds such as owls, emus and a white Peacock. We visited the very dark nocturnal tunnel. We saw bats and an amadillo. We then visited the education centre were we had the opportunity to examine animal skulls and work our which animal it was and if it was a herbivore , carninvore or omninvore. We ended the day by discussing food chains. We even made a few using pictures. We had the most fantastic day. A MASSIVE THANK YOU to ALL the parents . We could not do these trips with out you.

What a fantastic time we all had at the annual sports day.

This week in science we have been exploring our playground, to see what we could find that was living there. We have observed and identified many small creatures living in the bark, grass,tree roots and even in the tyres. We have looked at their habitats and found each one a little different. We noticed that the worms lived near the planting boxes or the grass, Wood lice liked living under the bark. Both creatures like it damp and dark. We recorded our findings on a tally chart.

In art we have begun to look at the work of the local artist Bob Barker. As you can see Bob uses lots of dark and black colours in his work. Class 2 have been investigating with charcoal and pencil using Bob as their insiration. We have had a go at following in Bob footstep using different media to discover which media we prefer. Do you like our first attempts?

We have begun to innvestigate all living things. We have discussed and looked at things that are living, dead and never been alive. We went out into our big playground to identify and classify things into the above catagories. Some of us struggled to understand that the wooden planters used to be alive. We had a discussion about the wood used to be a tree before it was cut down to make planks that make our wooden planters.

This half term we will be looking closely at the work of a local artist Bob Barker who brought up in Farsley and now lives in Eccles Hill, where he has his studio. We have begun to look at Bob's art and have noticed all his pictures seem to be dark with very little colour. We have talked about how the painting make us feel. We noticed he uses only a tiny bit of colour in them. We have talked about his pictures looking like real events and places. We have begun to experement with different media to see if we can create some of the strokes and shades that Bob has made. We have use charcoal and a different density of pencils . We drew lines, shaded and even tried our skills at smudging. Charcoal made our hands really black and everything else we touched.

Year 2 D & T this half term was to design a healthy snack for a picnic. This fit lovely with Healthy week. We all drew and designed a healthy snack, We then ordered our shopping from Miss Di. We used our design plan to create the snack just as our drawing. Some of them looked just like the drawing.First we all washed our hands really well just like we had been taught by the Nuffield Nurses. Then we peeled and sliced the fruit. After that we squeezed a small amount of honey /jam on our rice cake / cracker, so the other ingredients wouldn't slip off. We tested the snack by tipping it on its side to make sure nothing slipped off. After we all had the chance to eat our lovely healthy snacks.

We had a lovely afternoon with the Mind Mate Team in year 2. We talked about understanding and managing emotions. We learned some new strategies to use when we get angry or upset. We watched some slide to discuss what emotion the children were feeling. We listened to calming music and relaxed with a hook up hands.

Healthy Week – Handwashing Thank you for the help of the Nuffield team who came to help us with hand washing. They talked to us about the importance of clean hands, not just to keep us safe but to keep our friends and family safe too. Looked closely at bugs that can live on our hands especially down our finger nails. We drew and made some of the bugs with playdough. Then we all had chance to wash our hands really well. Then the Nuffield nurses put some special gel on our hands. We put our hands under a special light called ultra violet AND you could see all the places where we had missed, with the soap and water when we washed our hands. It shone bright under the light. We then went to wash our hand again properly. This time we sang happy birthday twice whilst we washed. We made sure we got the soap in all the tiny areas like our nails. Then we popped them back under the light. Yes! They were clean this time.

What a great morning we had with Katie from Skipping School. She has been helping us learn to skip. Not just skip but special skills like: speed bounce, double bounce, figure of 8 skipping. Thanks Katie, you were amazing.

Great fun in Year 2 Music with Mrs Rivers.

This half term we have been looking at the history of Bramley Baths. We all went for a walk to our local baths. We saw lots of old and new buildings on the way. We now know that Bramley Baths was built in 1904, when King Edward was on the throne. We know it is a special building and people used go to the baths for a wash. When we got back to school we made our own Bramley Baths Fact books. They are on the wll in the classroom for all to see.

Class 2 made such a great effort to celebrate world book day. Our costumes were amazing.

This weeks science, the children have brought in their science experiments in preperation for the next week S Factor event.

We have had fun this week. We have continued our D & T learning linking it to our English. We have begun to write instructions. We have talked about healthy foods and where they come from. We have talked about if they need peeling or cooking.We then talked about designing a healthy snack. So we started with an introduction to our instructions . Then we used bullet points for our ingredients and equipment. Then we wrote how to put the sandwich together using time connectives, bossy verbs and even some adverbs. After that we read our instruction out to Mrs Lofthouse who had all ingredients. It was funny, some of the sandwiches she made following our set of precise instructions.

We have been very lucky in year 2 to have D Side Dave come to visit again this year to help us with On line . We had great fun with Dave. He showed us slides and little videos with quizzes. We could all say which games were appropriate for our age range. We could even say the games that we know we should not play on, as they are not appropriate. We all know that if we are on line and we see something that is not appropriate, we know to tell our trusted adults. We can all name lots of trusted adults, including the ones at school, at home and even at our out of school clubs.

We all had a great time, preparing for our walk. We have studied carefully a variety of maps and atlases before we created our very own map of the local area. We then learned all the compass points, to ensure we knew which direction we would be walking. The morning arrived, the excitement high. We all popped on our high vis jackets, collected our clip board, maps and our very own compass. And we were off! We used the compass and our maps to find our way around the streets. We recorded all the different characteristics in our area and we used a key, so everyone could read and understand our maps. We walked toward Tescos. It used to be a car garage many years ago and the Pavilion used to be a cinima, Mrs Whiteley used to go when she was a little girl. We passed the church and even visited the very old Stanningley Primary School site on Gladstone Terrace. It was great fun.

Have a look how we have added and improved our beautiful Collages. We linked our art to our Geography and thought about what we would like to see looking out of our class window. We used the work of the Leeds artist Eva Pritchatt to inspire us.

We had a great time in PE with Gaz. We all had chance to use the equipment to show our skills in movement off. At the end of our movement journey we needed to end with a different pose each time.

This half term we have been learning about Plants and how they grow. We have discuss how plants grow and stay healthy. We have created an investigation , just like real scientists. We thought about our question we wanted to investigate and planned how we could create a fair test. We decided that some seeds will have soil & some no soil. Some seeds will have heat and sun and some will not. Some will have water and some will not. We put some in the dark cupboard, some outside in the freezing cold, some on the window sill and some inside in the library. Now we need to wait to see what happens. We have set up a monitoring sheet to collect our weekly evidence.

We have been learning some field work skills. Today we used our knowledge on atlases and maps to create our own maps, in preperation for our walk in the local area. We drew on some of the things we knew that was in the local area. We even used a key for our map to explain the drawings on our map. We all talked about the size of the drawing. We looked at other street maps and talked about objects being to scale.

What a great time we had with our friend Katie, Katie has helped us with our skipping skills. We now know how to hold the rope correctly, listen carefully for the click then jump. We will need to do lots of practice in preperation for our little skipping competition in the summer.

We have begun our topic in art. We are using the work of an artist that worked in Leeds, to inspire our art work. We have also linked this to our author of the half term, Eric Carle. rnEva Pritchatt was born in 1932 and came to England, when she was 5 years old as a refugee from Germany. She spoke no English. Eva was brought up in London. Then lived in Headingly & The Mean Wood area of Leeds when she grow, until she died in 2002. rnEva became interested in art at the age of 11. She drew & used paint but began to use wallpaper to create collages, as wallpaper was a free resource back in the 1950s. We have thought about Eva and the skills we have accquired so we have used our fingers instead of scissors to tear and create our colour board.

We have begun our Money strand of maths. We thought it was a great idea to get out the coins and recap what value all the different coins had. We all worked together to sort the coins. We could talk about the differents colours , sizes and shaped of the coins. We needed some time to recap the value of the coins and notes. We discuss what our parents use to pay for goods in the shops. Nearly of of the children explained how their grown up pay by, Card, online, byphone and even some pay by showing their watch to the scanners in store. We talked about history and how when Mrs Brier & Mrs Gaunt were young people only used coins and notes to pay for their goods. We have discuss the vocabulary around money. Some children did know what we meant by getting change and a recepts.

The children in year 1 and 2 put on an amazing performance of 'The Big Little Nativity' this week. They all looked wonderful in their outfits and they all worked really hard to remember their lines and the songs. We were so proud of them all! Well done!

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.