Christmas celebrations.

Here are a few snaps of festive fun in Kew Gardens Base!





Wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas and a Happy 2011!

R.E Jesus Light of the world

We have been learning how light is used as a symbol. We looked at the Christingle and how the candle represents Jesus bringing light into the world.

Then we thought about what we coulds do to make the world a lighter, brighter place. Here are some of ouir ideas!

Science and D.T.

In our science work we have been finding out about different forces. We have planned and carried out experiments investigating the forces involved in rolling vehicles down ramps, changing certain variables and noting the effects.

Next we looked at a variety of  toy vehicles, disassembled them and examined how the different parts worked and joined together.

Finally we designed and made our own vehicles. We had to work carefully to make sure the wheels turned successfully!

Then we added the finishing touches!

Here is a slideshow of our results.

Snow day activities.

I hope you have all had some fun in the snow! Remember it is very slippery today so do take care.
Here are some activities to keep you busy!
As we are looking at poetry in literacy you might like to compose your own snow poem. It could be a shape poem, or a list poem. Here are some examples.......
Snow Snow Snow.
Snow snow snow
Is
Falling
From
The sky
And
It is a
Winter
Wonderland
Out there
Believe
Me
Aldo Kraas

SNOWFALL

Snow snow wonderful snow. Snowman, snow forts, snow igloos, snow mobiles, snow boarding. All my favorite in the snow, all right, and all white. I hope it snows all night.
Brady McCrary

When composing your poems remember our top tips!

·         Use exciting, descriptive words.

·         Link words that sound good together [maybe rhyming or alliteration].

·         Separate describing words with commas.

·         Start each line with a capital letter.

·         Put a full stop at the end.

In our number work we are learning to read and order numbers.

Click  HERE to Play Rabbit, Carrot Number cruncher Game!

To play this game you need to:

       Read the question, Move the rabbit with the mouse until he is sitting on a correct answer and then CLICK to see him eat the carrot. He will only eat the carrot if he is sitting on a correct answer.

Next week in our topic work we are going to learn about how school life has changed in the last 100 years  by looking at a Victorian classroom and comparing it with our school today.

 To prepare for this at home it would be great if you could talk to a grand -parent or an older friend or neighbour about their memories of school life to show how gradual changes in practice were.

You could prepare a list of questions about how they travelled to school, what they wore,  what subjects they learned, what equipment they used, what the classroom was like and what happened if they got into trouble!

The video on the last blog entry will start you off.

Schools in the past

This week we are going to be looking at what school life was like in the Victorian era and how it has changed.

(Watch this video for a taster!)

Trip to Blandford Museum

Where in the world is Blandford?
We looked at Google Earth to find out exactly where our home town is.
Starting from 20,000 Km up we could see the shape of planet Earth.

Then we zoomed right into Great Britain, (2,000 Km up) 

then down to Southern England and the county of Dorset.

(100 km up) 

From 2Km up we could see the whole town of Blandford.  

Then we zoomed in even closer to find our school and the Blandford Town Museum and plan our route. 

This is a presentation of the photographs we took on our journey to the museum. They show very clearly the landmarks and key features of our home town.

(click the PLAY button)

Blandford in the past.

Today we had a fantastic morning at the Blandford museum! We had many questions we wanted to ask about what life was like 100 years ago. We were also curious to find out how historians know. What do they use to find out about the past?
The first source we used was an amazing collection of old photographs.

 From these we could see what the transport was like; no cars but a variety of carts and carriages pulled by horses and a few big heavy bikes! We could also see the shops clearly. There were no supermarkets but lots of small shops; a butcher, grocer, bookshop, clothes shop, household goods, tobacco shop, shoes and boots and fancy goods!
We then looked around the museum and looked at artefacts, things that people had kept in their houses that tell us about life in the past. In the home part we saw a washing tub and mangle, an old cooking rangeand a butter maker. Clues that help us understand  that kitchen work was pretty hard!

We also saw a blacksmith with a selection of his tools and a cobbler making shoes by hand.

 In the toy section we saw a variety of toys children had enjoyed including a dolls house, dolls, soldiers, model animals and marbles.....Quite different from the computer games of today!
One of our favourite bits was the train model.

 This has been made by carefully studying old maps, photographs and drawings and shows just how the steam trains served Blandford 100 years ago.
We also visited the victorian garden and saw how fruit and vegetables were grown and tended using natural methods.

We learnt so much!
Thank you to everyone at the museum for keeping this wonderful resource going and making our history come alive for us.

Here are some slides from the Blandford Town Museum for you to enjoy.

Poetry writing.

We have been learning to comment on poems.We have read many poems particularly focussing on shape poems and list poems,  We looked at how they work and why they are successful.
We have used the poems we enjoyed most to create poems of our own. Here are some of our class compositions.

Two Great Days Spent In Year 2 by Mr Willson - Parent Governor

I spent two very enjoyable days last week with you all and i enjoyed working with you all in your literacy and numeracy lessons.  There were some very creative rhyming poems written by you, which i thoroughly enjoyed.


On Friday i thought you all put on a great performance with your aerobic routine and creative dancing in your assembly. Well Done! You also did a wonderful job in baking some very yummy cakes! Keep up the excellent work


Mr Willson - Parent Governor

Preparing for assembly!

Do come and join our Collective Worship on Friday!

It is our turn to share our work and we will be showing everyone our  warm up aerobic routine. We will follow this with a performance of our creative dance 'New Beginnings'. This piece explores, through dance, how everyone is different and special; how we all learn from everyone we meet, and how we are all part of a number of different communities working togsther, growing and changing.

Here are some snaps of us preparing some tasty treats for you!

                                                              Don't they look good?

Finding out about the past.

This half term our topic work has a strong history focus. We are going to be developing our skills as historians. We are going to look at different ways of finding out about the past and discuss which are the most reliable methods.
We have started by looking at our own histories and compiling our family trees. Next we want to find out what life was like for our great, great grandparents and even for our great, great, great grandparents!

Here are some of the things we want to find out.......
What was Blandford like 100 years ago?

What buildings were there? Were there any shops?

What were homes and schools like?
What did children play with?
Did they have gardens?
Were there trains or cars?
What work did people do and what did they do for fun?
Keep reading our blog to find out what we discover!

Making Pizza!!!!

In Literacy we have been learning to read and write recipes.
Today we were making pizza. We planned the step by step instructions and wrote our recipes out on the laptops.
We discovered where all the ingredients came from and learned a new song "The Most Magnificent Pizza!"

It was a GREAT day!

R.E. Learning about Parables

We have been learning about parables. We looked at the parable of the 'Lost sheep'
We wrote our own versions of the story with 'blurb' to explain the meaning.

In our discussion the children raised BIG questions:

"Would God ever turn his back on us?"

"How many chances do you get?"

"What if people don't say sorry?"

"Does God still give people chances today?"

"Does God let people have their own opinions?"

What do YOU think???

International Day of Peace

On International Peace Day we reflected on the lovely feeling of peace.
We thought about the people everywhere who live in sadness, war or poverty who cannot find peace at the moment. We created peace flags like Nepalese prayer flags withour wishes for peace thrtoughout the world.
'Let Peace Be a Gift for Everyone'

Balancing our diets

Here we are sorting foods into groups.

We learnt about the nutrients each group provides and how eating a variety of foods keeps our bodies healthy and strong.