18.04.16
Summer Term Newsletter - Year 2
It seems incredible that we are welcoming our pupils back to the first half of the Summer Term. We are really hoping that the sun will start to shine and keep our spirits up.
Today, a mysterious parcel arrived for the children. Inside it were three intriguing clues, a note and a gift from ‘A Friend’. Amazinlgy, the postage stamp read ‘Magic Fairy Dust Land’ and the gift was a beautiful, musical pop-up book about Peter Pan. As soon as we opened the book, we began to read it to the children imeadiately! Some of the story is set during night time in London, which will be really interesting for the children to find out about our capital city!
Through our new science topic, whichfocuses on Animals and their Habitats, we will be researching insects and animals and finding out about some of the places animals live and what they need to eat to survive. We are encouraging the children to develop their research skills using the internet, library and a range of films and programmes. The Deadly 60 wildlife programme, on both CBBC and the CBBC Website is an excellent starting point for this topic, as is the Spring Watch website. We would like to encourage the children to bring in interesting information that they have found about insect and animal habitats and food chains.
On Monday last week, we took delivery of an incubator and eggs.We were delighted to see the little eggs wiggling about in the incubator and were amazed on Thursday morning to see an incubator full of healthy hatched chicks. We will be keeping the chicks in school for two weeks, at which point they will have begun to resemble small chickens. Our feathered visitors will help to support the work we are doing in science on life cycles, growth and grouping types of animals.
In maths this half term we will be doing a lot of work on measures. We will be weighing and measuring using grammes and kilogrammes, centimetres and metres and millilitres and litres. We will even be measuring temperature with a thermometer! It would be great if you could encourage your chid to help out if you have any measuring to do at home. We will also be revisiting addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and using our knowledge and skills help us solve problems involving missing numbers. You can help your chidlren at home by practising counting in multiples of 2, 3, 5 and 10 and encouraging them to use their calculation skills to help solve practical problems in every day life eg, lollies are 15p each. How much will it cost us if we bought 4? How much change will we have from £1?
Our RE lessons will be focusing on the idea of faith and developing an understanding of God. We will talk about how important this is for some people. Our RE curriculum involves learning about different faiths and this half term we will focus on Judaism. We have some lovely objects for the children to explore and to help them learn about the Jewish faith.
Our PHSE activities are all about 'Relationships' and learning to cope with different feelings and real life situations.
During art sessions the children will be exploring colour mixing and looking at the painting ‘Starry Night’ by Vincent Van Gough.
In their weekly music and singing sessions the children will be learning about 'pitch' and enjoy playing all of our different musical instruments
Some important dates for your diaries …
Some useful websites for our topic…
- Bird Egg Shell identification
- Chicken Life Cycles
- Story of a Swan’s life Cycle
- Food Chains
- Animal Habitats
- A lovely Eco Kids website with outdoor learning ideas
If anyone has any resources, skills or information they would like to share with regard to our new topic, your child’s class teacher would love to hear from you.
Early next half term, we will begin a detailed itinerary of transition activities which we have already planned carefully with Alvaston Junior School staff. We aim to help our pupils have a confident and successful transition into Key Stage 2. We will provide further details of this programme towards the end of this half term and we will also make arrangements to cater for those pupils who plan to attend alternative Key Stage 2 settings. Please let the School Office know as soon as possible if this applies to your child.
Mrs Zarattini, Mrs McManus, Miss Rennie and Mr Cascarina