This half-term has flown by and it is strange to think that we are nearly halfway through Year 2 already!  Brown Bears have continued to impress us with their hard-working attitudes.

In English, we have been working on pieces influenced by the following books:

Our writing is really starting to step up now and we are producing longer pieces of writing containing more of the required elements for the expected standard for Year 2.

In Maths, we have been building on our knowledge of multiplication and division facts for the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.  Our next table focus will be the 3s if you want to start getting ahead by counting in 3s with your child.  This week we have been exploring mass and comparing kilograms and grams.  The children faced some tricky challenges and really had to be resilient in their quest to convert 1/2 kg into grams and then convert 250g into kg.  At the start of the week, we looked at the riddle - which is heavier, a kilogram of feathers or a kilogram of bricks?  The children have now worked out that this is a trick question, as the mass remains the same no matter what the object.

Our Geography unit has been a real adventure and we have been busy travelling to each continent.  We have been finding out different facts about each continent and exploring how the countries in each one are similar or different to each other and to other areas around the world.  The children have developed skills in using atlases, comparing factsheets and using QR codes to visit specific child-friendly websites. 

Test us on the continent names and about the physical and human features found on each continent and you'll be impressed! We might even be able to tell you some facts that you didn't already know!  The hardest part of the learning was comparing the different continents as, due to them being so large, many countries share similar climates and features. As you may have already heard, we have been looking at the artist Jackson Pollock in Art and more recently begun the difficult task of designing our own eggs inspired by Faberge, which we will then sculpt.  Resilience will definitely be our focus value, as we begin covering a balloon in layer upon layer of tissue paper and then decorating the fragile shells before the balloon causes them to deflate.  We are looking forward to finishing these in Spring 2.

What do you see in each of these paintings and which do you prefer?  We spent a long time talking about how they made us feel, why they were given certain names and what we could see within the paintings.  Creating similar painting styles on the computer using 'Paint' encouraged us to work on our mouse skills and learn some of the toolbox features.

In PE, we have had great fun learning new rhythmic gymnastic skills using ribbons and colourful scarves to move our bodies to music.