Busy, Busy Year 2s

Over the last week, Year 2 has been filled with excitement (and a few nerves) about their play, Ralph the Reindeer. The children have been perfecting their loud singing voices, their slower speaking voices and epic dance moves. There was a moving sleigh involving the reindeer and Santa (of course!) and plenty of busy elves tapping away.

The tapping away has continued in the classroom as the children begin to prepare for the Entrepreneur Market during the Final Friday Bonanza. They have been working extremely hard and using their fine motor skills; using wool they have made dreamcatchers which involved lots of patience and perseverance to weave the wool, tie knots, thread beads and straws and tie on feathers.

The children were resourceful and used wood they found around school to make a Christmas tree ornament and then moved on to make finger-knitted snakes. They have put on their 'entrepreneur hats' from the very beginning of this process, working out how much money they will need to ask for in their loan application to the Headteacher, as well as the costing of each item, including labour.

On Monday, they used their neatest handwriting to write a letter to Mrs Gould detailing how much money they need for the loan, what they would be buying with this money and what they would be making. Their loan was approved (YAY!) and they could then continue their crafting. The children are very much commended for their creativity and excitement as they contribute to the Entrepreneur Market. They have been learning about profit and calculating to find how much money they might make and how much they may be able to donate to charity after they have paid back the loan.

As well as the skills of perseverance and patience, the children have been working on kindness and inclusion, especially when playing at break time and lunch time. They have discussed kind hands and feet as well as communicating feelings with friends before seeking the help of a teacher. The children are getting better at this and the teachers have been very happy to see them playing together in the quad with the football and ensuring that they are including anyone who wants to be a part of the action (we might have some future World Cup players in our midst!).

Anti-bullying week took place in November. Yhe Year 2s immersed themselves in the theme, ‘Reach Out’, discussing how important it is to speak out for yourself and for others when they see something that they know is not okay. The children created incredible and insightful acrostic poems (click on the images below to read) around the ‘reaching out’ theme and wrote a letter to Goldilocks to give her some advice and reassurance after the incident that happened at the Bears' house. The conversations that took place during that week, as well as the conversations that continue in our classroom, are extremely valuable.

Pantosaurus also made an appearance in class recently, to educate the children about keeping their private parts private and the importance of the word ‘no’ when discussing our bodies. We listened to a catchy song - “Pants, pants, PANTOSAURUS. Pants, pants, PANTOSAURUS”.

The teachers in Year 2 cannot believe the progress the children have made over this term. An example of this fantastic progress is the writing that has been produced as they have written out their class Star Stories: Rosie’s Star (MH) and Lily’s Star (TK). The children confidently wrote their own interpretation of a star (some wrote over 4 pages!) that came tumbling down from the sky and landed in the blue, calm sea or a clean swamp and was used by two different animals. One of the animals used the star to find its way home and the other animal used it to keep its babies warm, but unfortunately the babies ‘wiggled and jiggled’ and the star floated back into the sky. They are now thinking about their own star story, using a planning sheet to organise their ideas and think which animals will use the star, what habitats the star will end up in, how the star will be used and the different adjectives they can include. Their creativity is flowing as is their eagerness to learn and contribute. Well done, children!