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 written strategies for adding and subtracting numbers. We have been using the column method to set out the calculations and dealing with the 'ones' numbers first before the 'tens'  This will make it easier for us to use this method when we need to solve trickier problems which involve bridging and exchanging.

Our Geography unit has come to an end and we have managed to travel almost to every continent!  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 of the 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 sculpting our own eggs inspired by Faberge.  Resilience has definitely been our focus value, as the weather has not been good enough for us to head outside and complete out final Pollock inspired splatter artwork and deflating balloons has made our egg sculptures a delicate process.  We are looking forward to finishing both of 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.

We ended the half term with a workshop from the 'Happily Ever After' company.  The children reflected beautifully about the importance of keeping ourselves happy and understood the different things they could do to improve their own mental health.  We had great fun using drama to show how we are feeling and even got a chance to use our rhythmic gymnastic skills that we have been working on in PE to use ribbons to move our bodies to music.