Week 8 -  Forest School!

Well done to our award winners from last week. They are Mahdi (Golden Citizen), Mira (Whizzy Worker) and Thom (Behaviour Super Star). We are very proud of all of you! A big Storm Whales whoosh!

Maths - Multiplication

Forest school has started off very well with the children exploring multiplication using natural materials. We made arrays to show the 2s and 5s times tables. Well done woodland mathematicians!

Art - Leaf Collages

Feeling inspired by the incredible outdoor artist, Andy Goldsworthy, we decided to take advantage of the amazing autumn colours and make autumn collages using fallen materials. We collected leaves and sticks and then arranged them into patterns to make beautiful temporary pieces of forest art. They've all blown away now but are captured in photos, phew!

Design Technology - joining materials

We tested our engineering skills by trying to make picture frames using sticks. It was no easy feat and the children worked collaboratively to support each other. The finished product looked great as a forest photo frame though so well worth the effort!

The Storm Whales Show

All of this term, the Storm Whales have been working towards a performance of our class book, The Storm Whale. They have created puppets, written playscripts and learned a class song in preparation of the big show. This morning the Gruffalo class came to watch our amazing performance! The children were incredible. They had learned their lines, spoke clearly and blew the audience away! It was an amazing show and the children were exceptional. 

Maths - Measuring

In order to build a fire for toasting marshmellows, we had to collect sticks of various lengths and thicknesses. We used rulers to measure out sticks to provide Mr. Butler with plenty of kindling. 

Toasting Marshmellows!

The highlight of everyone's week in forest school was toasting marshmellows on the fire. Mr. Butler helped us to make sure that they were perfectly crispy on the outside and soft and gooey on the inside; truly scrumptious!

Yoga

After a very busy week, we took some time to chill out with Cosmic Kids Yoga. We try to practice at least 15 minutes of yoga per week in The Storm Whales class in order to improve our strength, flexibility, focus, mindfulness and relaxation techniques, as well as a multitude of other benefits that yoga has to offer. Don't we look chilled!

Have a try at home during the holiday. There are loads of yoga stories and guided relaxations to choose from. 

Week 7

This week The Storm Whales have been learning about shape in maths. We looked at the properties of shapes and started to explore symmetry. We then sorted shapes according to their lines of symmetry. 

In art, we have been getting our props ready for our Storm Whale show and have been making puppets. We used our Friday afternoon to learn new skills such as; cutting, collaging and joining materials. The puppets are looking great!

In Science, we continued our work on habitats, this week looking at woodland habitats. We are investigating this learning further in forest school but here's a video to help with understanding forest habitats. 

Week 6

This week, the Storm Whales started thinking about writing their own narrative sequels to The Storm Whale in Winter. They worked as a team to create an amazing desert island in which to set their stories. They then worked together to think about what problems Noi might encounter in this beautiful, yet treacherous place. 

Week 5

This week the Storm Whales have been further developing their descriptive vocabulary and shared their ideas in group brainstorms, describing the character of Noi from the Storm Whale. They collaborated wonderfully and wrote brilliant character descriptions as a result. Well done Storm Whales!

In math, we have been partitioning to double. The children have been breaking two, or even three, digit numbers into hundreds, tens and units and then doubling each amount before putting them all back together again! As always, they have tried their absolute best to tackle these new challenges. 

See if your child can explain how to do it by asking them to double 34 or even 214!

Week 4

Last week the Storm Whales were subtracting with pirates and learning new methods in maths. They looked at partitioning 2 digit numbers and then jumping back in tens and units on a hundred square. Very impressive maths skills! 

In Literacy, the Storm Whales wrote some incredible setting descriptions from their text, The Storm Whale in Winter. They used a variety of ambitious vocabulary including similes and expanded noun phrases. Some of my favourites were; howling, icy wind and the lantern was glowing like embers on the snow. Makes you shiver just reading them!

The Storm Whales also had their first class wide reward and chose a pyjama day. We had a fabulously cosy day and felt very proud of ourselves for getting 100 class wide rewards! Didn't they all look snug?

Week 3:

Last week the Storm Whales got very active in their maths lessons. We explored addition using money in a Storm Whale and Gruffalo Shop and acted as The Enormous Crocodile in order to eat the greater amount. The children used various methods and were amazing mathematicians! 

We were also extremely fortunate to have Beth Dobbin, the British 200m champion, visit our school and talk to us about her amazing journey. It was inspiring and really taught us an important lesson about persevering to achieve our dreams! She really put us through our paces with her training regime! 

Week 2: Exploring Habitats

Last week the Storm Whales started their science topic, Living things and their Habitats. The first habitat we explored was in our own back yard, the Walkley Forest School. The children set out to see what wildlife we could find and were very impressed by the diversity of the plants and animals. See if they can remember what we found!

The Storm Whales have had an absolutely fantastic start to Y2. We have been looking at our class book, The Storm Whale, in more detail and have been doing some amazing writing and drama around this. We have also made some fantastic collages in art of the Storm Whale returning to its pod. 

Here are some great activities to do at home!

listening and reading:

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/games/spot-the-dragon

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/games/face-match

grammar and spelling:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-videos

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/spell

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/word-grammar

Maths:

https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/subjects/zjxhfg8

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/firstlevel/mathematics/money_calculations/play/

Fun games:

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/games