Stanningley Primary School

Thank You so much for my lovely biscuit Emmy, it look amazing.

Here are some of the things we have been learning and making at home.

Thank You so much for your lovely Card

We have had great fun at home learning our music with Mrs Rivers. She made a video that we could all join in with. We loved it. Thank You Mrs Rivers

We had a great time during healthy week. We have learned lots more about why exercise is so important, how to make a fruit salad, we have looked closely at food labels and can now check how much sugar is the food we buy and eat. We have also Learned how important it is to wash our hands very carefully. We used a special machine to check if we have washed them properly. The Ultra Violet light showed us where we had missed with the soap. We had a special visitor from Change for Life who showed us how easy it is to get 5 pieces of fruit and Vegetable in our daily diet. We then all made gorgeous fruit smoothies.

We all had a fabulous day at Kirkstall Abbey House Museum. We arrived to a warm welcome from the staff who explained the rules and the rooms to visit. We looked up and down the streets. We paid particular attention to the cobbled street and how difficult it could be to walk on. We looked in all the old shops and compared the differences to our shops today. We compared toys and we particularly enjoyed looking at the old dolls houses where the wealthier children would have practised being good house keepers. We all took our sketch books and enjoyed drawing the things that interested us the most. Some of us dressed up in the old costumes. We even had chance to check out the old Abbey as we walked over in the rain to the room where we ate our lunch. We would like to say a massive thank you to all the adults that helped us and the staff at Kirkstall it was a great day. The staff were so impressed with our manors and behaviour that they gave us a very special certificate that is a rare event they said. Thanks again.

Year 2 were very happy that they could meet up with our poetry friend Colin, Julie and Adam. We had so much fun putting movement to the story Something Else. We invited our adults from home to come and watch our performance.

We have had a great week in class 2. The week began with a visit from our friends , Colin, Julie and Adam. They helped us create a poem from the book we have been reading called Something Else. We then learned how to put moving words to our poem. Finally we performed the story for our adults from home. We all dressed as our favourite book character. We played a game called ' Who am I?' Drew our favourite character and described them to our friends. Leeds Library service came and performed an detective assembly for us. It made us all laugh. We created our very own book cover including the blurb and we even had time to complete a book scavenger hunt in our school library. It was great fun.

Year 2 have being observing the weather in the month of February. We have recorded our findings each day. Then we have put our findings into a tally chart. After that we created a pictogram. Finally we interpreted the data and discuss our findings

Year 2 have been working with ball to work on our balance and travelling skills. We have used a three point balance with our bodies Then we added to the challenge by adding a ball that we made travel around our bodies.

Year 2 were the first class to reach the top of the attendance ladder this year. To celebrate class 2 held a democratic vote to choose what their class treat would be. These were the choices they came up with: a welly walk, movie with pop corn, baking afternoon, craft afternoon or a pyjama afternoon with snacks. To ensure it was fair, we all had a vote and the pyjama afternoon with treats won. So we all brought our PJs to school and in the afternoon we put them on and had a party game, snacks and we even managed to squeeze in a movie too. Well Done Year 2 for coming to school every day. Thank You to all the parents who have supported their child and brought them to school each day.

Year 2 was well represented in the Talent Show. Our children did an amazing job of entertaining the whole school. Well done to you all.

We have been observing plant life in our school grounds. We have planted seeds and bulbs around the grounds and we are excited to watch them grow. We have also looked at trees and flowers naming and labelling them. We have even used our Science knowledge for our English writing this week. We have been learning how to write a set of instruction to plant a seed or bulbs. The children enjoyed following each other instruction to ensure they were all in the correct order.

We took advantage of the nice dry weather to have a go at skipping. Some of us can skipping well and some of us have never tried before. We did all have fun in the sun.

Ye!! Look what we made.

Year 2 have been looking at the Local Artist Bob Barker. He spent his early life in Farsley. Although he was Yorkshire born and bred, during his youth he spent a little while in Cornwall. There he met two prominent artists (Keith English & Tom Gower) and spent hours watching them paint. This gave Bob the belief that he too could be a professional artist. As Bob uses a lot of blacks and greys in his work this fit perfectly with our National curriculum objectives using pencils, charcoal and pastels. So we set to making our own art work in the theme of Bobs work. We have really looked closely are Bobs work using a viewfinder to help us. We have had a great time.

We have listen to and watched the parable of The Good Samaritan. We have completed a word study using the Talk Matter process. We have sequenced the parable and discuss how each of the characters felt. We had a long discussion on what the parable was telling us. We rewrote the story with a focus of using different openers. We decided that the message within the story was be kind to your neighbour, Treat people how you want to be treated.

We have been having fun using hoops to help us with our static balance.

Year 2 have begun their Science topic Plants which will be cross curricular with Geography. We will be watching the weather and recording weather patterns. We have been on a walk around the school grounds to observe what plants are already in our grounds. We used our geography skills to work out where in the grounds it would be good to plant our new bulbs/ seeds/ vegetables. We know that things in the garden will grow much better when they are planted facing the sun. We know the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. So we have chosen a lovely planting box that is facing South. Our friend Steve the gardener has prepared it ready for us. Thank You Steve.

We have been working with globes,atlases, maps, aerial maps. We have been learning the special vocabulary related to direction. We know the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. We have learned a mnemonic to remind us. Never , Eat , Shredded, Wheat, North, East, South and West. We have looked at a compass and used it to help us with direction in our classroom.

We all had a great Party Day. We all brought food to share, we played party games and we also Listen Live to Santa read us the Story of the Night Before He then asked us some question about the story we had listen to. It was great fun. Here's the link - Chhttps://learnliveuk.com/twas-the-night-before-christmas-live-read-by-father-christmas/ristmas.

Wow! Did we have a great time learning our lines and practicing our roles. The Donkey Seller was a fabulously fun Nativity that we all enjoyed. We would like to thank all our adult who came to see us or helped us learn our lines. Year 2 were excellent at acting with the help of Mary and Joseph from Year 1. We had outstanding narrators who spoke with clarity. Year 1 all contributed to amazing singing and looked amazing too. Thank You to all for your help .

We had a great afternoon investigating clay. Following our investigation we invite a pottery professional to come and help us create thumb pots. We then painted our thumb pot ready to send home for little Christmas gifts.

To complete our week of The Gun Powder Plot we have created these lovely bonfire night pictures using wax crayons.

We have been learning the story of The Gun Powder Plot in yr 2. We have loved it. We have played and acted out the story using some props. We have learned the story using action and created mind/text map to help us remember. We have even used our math skills to work out how old Guy Fawkes was and how many years ago it was. We have done research to find out how he died and we have even enjoyed making up our own gruesome ways in which he could have died. We have drawn our own pictures and popped them on our class timeline. We have even learned The traditional poem to remember the plot. Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and plot. I see no reason why gun powder treason should ever be forgot.

We have been so lucky to have our friend Tom, from Shine come into Year 2 to help us with our phonics. We had great fun using all the vocabulary and action from the game Cricket. We know lots of new vocabulary which will help us in the spring when we learn how to play cricket. Thanks Tom it was amazing!

Year 2 have had a great time learning all about Mary Seacole. What a wonderful lady she was. We leaned; when she was born, who her parents were, where she went, what she did and why people did like her. Yes some people didn't like her because of the colour of her skin. She helped the soldiers in the Crimean War. She was so brave she even tended to the soldiers on the battle field. Mary tended their wounds with herbal remedies such as lemon grass, aloe vera the lemon medicine tasted very sour. When the war was over she did receive some medals. We all loved learning all about her so much we created our own information books to read.

Year 2 are loving their art topic this half term. We are now looking at the work of an American artist called Michelle Jursa. Michelle is a Mississauga-based fine art finger painter. Having started with brushes, she noticed that more than 50% of the paint application was with her fingers. This felt so natural, so she decided to focus solely on finger painting using rich, brightly coloured oil paints. She created some wonderful piece. The first picture named Un-corked was our inspiration to create our own finger paintings.

We have been investigating every day materials. Our question was, Can all materials be squashed, stretched ,bent or twisted? We collected lots of material in a basket and began our investigation. It was great fun squashing and squeezing. We discovered that many things can be squeezed twisted bent and even stretched. But a metal can is not as flexible as some other materials.

We have had a lovely afternoon learning about how Muslim People celebrate New Life. Our class friend Mahima asked her mum to come into school to help us learn about Islamic celebrations. We found lots of information including the new babies have their hair shaved off around a week after they are born. It is also tradition to rub honey across the lips of a new born baby to give them a sweet life. We know that all the ladies including girls have to cover their heads when they are in company of the elders. Mimi’s mum was so kind she even brought lots of traditional food for us to taste. It was delicious. We listen to music and had a dance. It was just like being at a real party.

We have begun our science topic of materials. We have all been on a material hunt and found an object we would like to talk about. We then popped all our things together ready to discuss and sort. We had a very long conversation about the ways in which we could sort all of our objects, this included size, shape, weight, colour…. Eventually we decided to sort them into natural or man made materials. This was not as easy as we thought. Some of our materials were natural but had been moulded by men, some things had bits of natural and man made. So we needed think hard about our sorting rings and we came up with 2 rings that over lap in the middle. This is called a Venn Diagram. Our discussion were amazing, we listened really carefully to what each of our friends had to say.

We have been so lucky to have our friends from the Road Safety Team come in to help us cross the road safely. We all went to the roadside to find a safe place to cross with Amber. We used our safety words to help us remember the Pedestrian code. Think, Stop, Look , listen and repeat. We all made sure we kept looking and listening as we walked across the road safely. Thanks Amber

We have had great fun investigating different media. We used felt tips, water colours, acrylic paint and powder paint. We had a discussion about which media was our favourite. Do you like our portraits?

We have been investigating place value. We have used Base 10 to represent the tens and ones in numbers.

We have begun to work with money, We can recognise and name coins. We have used the skills we have learned with column addition to add up our coins.