2017-2018
The Great White Shark
https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/animals/sea-life/great-white-sharks/
http://easyscienceforkids.com/great-white-shark-facts-for-kids-video/
https://kids.kiddle.co/Great_white_shark
Another Blue Peter Monday! WOW!
I truly couldn’t believe it when Theo told me that he’d been sent a DIAMOND Blue Peter badge! What an amazing achievement to receive this special award. That’s three weeks in a row now that we’ve had Blue Peter Monday - truly inspiring - well done Theo! A couple of people in our class have started to work towards a Blue Peter badge too after hearing about your success Thank you.
Blue Peter badge Monday!
Wowsers! This morning Iris shared that she too had earned a Blue Peter badge! It was awarded for her work on Rosa Parks and other inspirational women in society, which included creating a factsheet and helping to lead a Key Stage 1 assembly where she shared what she had learnt. What a brilliant way to start the week. Well done Iris - your hard work was recognised.
Iris and Theo both shared their Blue Peter success in our whole school assembly this morning.
Thank you.
Blue Peter success!
What a lovely surprise for Theo this morning! He received his SECOND Blue Peter badge for his letter about King Richard. Well done - it was lovely to share your news at the start of the day.
We loved the Flower Festival!
Class 2 enjoyed their walk in the sunshine and loved seeing all the different kinds of flowers and displays.
Thank you for our invite St John the Baptist church.
The Cup of Courage
Can you remember why the girls received the Eddy Parry Cup of Courage
in our Gold Book assembly today?
Interactive dice
Here are two links for the interactive dice for your homework game:
https://www.freeonlinedice.com
Hope you enjoy it.
Year 2 football competition
This afternoon, six year 2 children went to Curzon School to play in a football tournament.
Thank you children for representing our school so well this afternoon. Mrs Shaw and I are so proud of all of the effort you put into your games.
We are proud to announce to everyone that you came runners up in the competition and received a second place trophy.
Brilliant sportsmanship!
A special thank you to Mrs Shaw for organising the event and to parents and carers for transporting and supporting the players.
Watch out Wimbledon - here we come!
Thank you Mr Willdig for our introductory tennis lesson today.
Rapid recall of our five times table
We had great fun today in our maths lesson, as we tried to improve our knowledge of our five times table facts. We have been trying to improve our speed too.
Gold Book work
Some shining examples of beautiful work this week in Class 2's Gold Book.
Thank you children.
What goes ha ha ha bonk?
We've had great fun in Class 2 this week
Following on from our Tiddilik story, we have been thinking about jokes which make us laugh. We have shared and read lots of jokes, we have questioned why jokes are funny and why they work. We have also made our own joke books which we have taken great pride in.
Well done children.
Thank you for all of the joke books.
Hot, hot, hot!
Due to the rise in temperature, we decided to investigate how to read a thermometer in our maths lessons this week.
We measured the temperature outside, the temperature of different pots of water, read different scales on thermometers and set challenges for one another on online thermometers too.
Well done children, some great understanding.
Robin Hood record
If anyone likes dressing up, supporting charity and spending time with family and friends this could be for you 😊
Nice to see you, to see you nice!
Class 2 children were so proud to share their super animal homework projects today. They shared with each other and with Miss Tulley. After school, we were so excited to welcome Mums, Dads and grandparents into class to see our work and share in our success too
Thank you so much for coming to see our projects and for your kind comments.
Our children are working very hard and they are enjoying learning from one another
It's fun, fun, fun learning Geography
Class 2 have dived into their new topic - 'Where in the world are we?' by learning all about the 7 continents of the world. We have been singing songs, looking at maps and globes, completing jigsaws and even playing 'Around the World' twister!
Please enjoy the songs we have been learning and the websites we have been using:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6DSMZ8b3LE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmvw3sTGajs
http://www.softschools.com/social_studies/continents/map.jsp
https://www.learningliftoff.com/kindergarten-history-7-continents-song/
Competition spotting!
I spotted this!
A chance to design a national book token and win prizes!
https://www.worldbookday.com/competitions/design-national-book-token-competition-2018/
Easter holiday sunshine!
Happy Easter holidays from the school hens! Here they are enjoying the lovely sunshine... the sunshine gives them a great opportunity to preen themselves and have a dustbath. It also makes them feel relaxed as you can see 😊
Beautiful Easter Hats and a gorgeous parade!
Fun at Twycross 2018!
Proud teachers! What a delight it was to take Class 2 to the zoo.
Super behaviour + inquisitive minds = perfect day!
Please enjoy the slideshows of some of the photographs that the children took to capture their time at Twycross Zoo.
What a super day!
Worms and building a wormery!
SUPER SCIENCE ALERT!
Deep, deep down in the soil, you'll find these wiggly worms!
Class 2 had super fun digging for worms, discovering the worms, collecting the worms,
observing the worms and creating a wormery so that they can observe them further in the future.
Year 2 Sports Relief 2018
Thank you Mr Willdig for running our sports session today in aid of Sports Relief. Class 2 also enjoyed bursting into aerobics and jogging sessions throughout the day! The children have asked to do this more often.....watch this space!
Newts!
Wow! Class R had some very special visitors today! We found 2 smooth newts in our outdoor area. How fantastic that we have amazing wildlife visiting us- we are very lucky! We are now going to use these visitors to inspire learning.
See if you can find out some facts about smooth newts and comment below.
We’ve arrived!
A special Mother's Day service
Thank you so much to the ten members of our SING group who performed at the Mother's Day service at church this morning.
You all sang beautifully and made us all very proud.
We hope you've enjoyed the rest of your day. Thank you for sharing your time with us this morning.
A special message for special mums xx
We hope you've had a wonderful Mummy's Day today - here are a few messages just to say how much we love you and are grateful for all you do:
World Book Day 2018
It may have been a week later than planned - but we all had great fun dressing up as book characters today. Thank you for all of the beautiful costumes and ideas about books and stories. What a great day we've had!
Book Fair 2018
A very BIG thank you to all the children, parents, grandparents, carers, teaching assistants and teachers who attended our travelling book fair over the last week. It was wonderful to feel the buzz and excitement for the books on the shelves. The children's faces were full of smiles as they glanced over all of the books that were on offer. For some children it was very hard to choose which one to have and for some they zoomed in for the book they had had their eye on for a while!
As you can see from our poster, from our sales, we have been able to choose nearly £500 worth of brand new books for the children to enjoy in school - BRILLIANT!
If your child didn't get chance to visit the book fair this time, then they will have been given a £1 book voucher towards the cost of a book at your local book shop today. The details on where you can spend the voucher are on the back of it.
Just a reminder that tomorrow we will be dressing up.......
Look forward to seeing you in your costumes tomorrow for World Book day - Smalley style!
Thank you!
Boxercise!
Look at the new sport that we are trying out in P.E!
Miss Tulley to the rescue!
Look at the photo I received from Miss Tulley today! Can you guess what it is and where it has come from?
It's from the water feeder that our chickens drink from! Miss Tulley has been keeping a special eye on the hens at her house and also on the water situation. The chickens must have fresh water at all times and these containers had frozen solid twice today. Miss Tulley has emptied and then refilled them with warm water. Thank you Miss Tulley, you're a Super Chicken Carer and the hens love you for it! xx
Here's one of my favourite photographs from warmer times!
Happy hens!
Brrrrrr! I hope that you have all enjoyed the snow today. It has been very, very cold... because of the forecast the school hens have been staying at my house so that I can regularly check their water and feed. Today they have had a big bowl of spaghetti to warm them up 😋 and some fresh (warm!) water. It was too cold for the chickens to have some exercise outside of their coop but they still got chance to experience the snow when they pecked it off my wellies!
Oxford Owl
Calling all Parents and Carers,
To celebrate WORLD BOOK DAY and as a reminder of this super resource - here is a link to Oxford Owl, which allows you to read and share 250 free online books, ranging from age 3 up to age 11.
All you need to do is register (join us) with an email address (this is free) and then follow the link to the ebooks; lots of the books have fun, helpful activities to enjoy too.
Please click on the link to register:
https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/?selLanguage=en&mode=hub
Let us know what you think by commenting below - did you find it useful?
Happy reading!
Warming us up on World Book Day!
Hello everyone in Class 2 - have you been out to play in the beautiful, crisp snow yet? Have you built a snowman and climbed aboard your sledge? How many icicles have you seen hanging from the guttering? Who has been cosy in their pyjamas, drinking hot chocolate and watching the snow from the window?
Whatever you're up to today, enjoy making those memories that stay with you forever - I love it when it snows as it reminds me of when I was a little girl and I love to remember what I loved to do when it was white over.
You know how we loved writing our 'Joy is.....' poem - well I thought it would be lovely to write one called 'Snow is.....' and write about all those things that snow makes us feel, makes us think about, makes us picture in our minds, lets us experience. I think I'd start mine with.....
SNOW IS.....
Snow is the wonder of fresh, untrodden snow,
Snow is building the tallest, friendliest snowman,
Snow is a crunchy, orange carrot for a nose,
Snow is the beautiful, dangling icicles hanging in the air,
Bring them into school and we'll design a snowy display with all of your creations.
Here's my book I'm going to be starting today and one of my gorgeous cats - Phoenix. I bought my book especially for World Book Day 2018. What are you reading today to celebrate the wonder of books. Make a comment below to share your book and the author. Let us know what you think about it and how many marks out of 10 you'd give it.
Fancy a maths game? Here are some links to the games we love playing in class and a few new ones to try:
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
http://www.ictgames.com/moneyPage.htm
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/ordering-and-sequencing-numbers
I've been watching the seagulls fly overhead and I've been to put some seed and fresh water out for them, as they struggle to find food in weather like this. Do you have any birds to feed in your garden?
Please keep safe and warm and I look forward to hearing all about your snow adventures when we get back to school.
From Mrs Reckless x
Snow Challenges!
Can you think creatively and solve the following challenges?
Design a new vehicle that can travel through snow.
Build different size/denisity snowballs and measure their melt times.
Feed the Birds - in the snowy weather they need food. Try to hang food and put some on the ground so you can see which are ground feeders. Spend time identifying birds - they are lot easier to see against the snowy background. Sketch the birds, so you can identify them later at school (if no access to bird books or internet). Spend 30 mins watching the birds, count them, plot bar charts etc.
101 creative uses of a sledge
What is the best shape for a snow house. You want to build a snow house, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of snow. What shape house should you build to get the most floor area for the least amount of effort? What other ideas do you have? If you could build it against a wall (i.e. one side already made for you) what shape would you build?
Be creative and answer any of the 5 challenges above. Post pictures/comments as answers.
Easter Hat Parade
A letter announcing a lovely event for children in Class R, 1 and 2 went out on the last day of term. Get your thinking hats on to create a gorgeous Easter hat for the last day of next half term.
We look forward to seeing your creations.
Fire safety
Last Monday, Class 2 and 6 welcomed Jamie, a Derbyshire firefighter, into school. Jamie came to talk to the children about what to do if there was a fire emergency. He also spoke about the importance of having working fire alarms in your house and the need to talk through a fire escape plan. The children brought home a letter to discuss some of these ideas with mums and dads. Thank you for helping us to think about our safety Jamie.
We are loving the equipment in Gymnastics!
Safer Internet Day - Quiz
Let's see how cyber safe you are.
Can you make the right choices?
https://www.esafety.gov.au/kids-quiz/
Planning for Pancake Day!
Year 2 have been reading Pancake Poetry in preparation for Shrove Tuesday next week. We have enjoyed sharing the Michael Rosen poem 'The Pancake Maker' and then thinking about what we like drizzled on our pancakes. We have been learning about the different phrases in the poem and what they mean.
Can you tell someone what 'I get my kicks' means?
We then started to create a group poem with repeating ideas.
Well done children - can you share your poem with someone at home?
Congratulations Your Majesty
This morning in our ten to nine starter task, we wrote CONGRATULATIONS messages to Queen Elizabeth II; she has been on the throne for 66 years today.
Team work reading and spelling!
In Class R, 1 and 2 we are all working together to learn how to read and spell all of the tricky words from our phonic and English lessons. These are those words that don't follow the normal segmenting and blending way of reading. We help the children to recognise these by sight.
In Class R, the children are working hard on the Phase 2 words.
In Class 1, the children are working hard on the 3 & 4 words.
In Class 2, the children are working hard on the Phase 5 and the Year 2 exception words.
Please help your child to read and spell these words.
Many thanks
The Early Years and Key Stage 1 Team
Money, money, money!
This week in our Maths lessons, we have been working hard on counting the value of a different amount of coins.
We have been looking at amounts up to 20p, 50p and £1.00 and £2.00. We have been counting in 10 pences, 2 pences and 5 pences.
Here is a link to the slides we have been using to help to practise these skills:
Play these games at home to practise these important life skills:
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Interactive.aspx?cat=15
http://www.ictgames.com/moneyPage.htm
Good luck and happy counting!
Doubling
This week in maths, we have been doubling numbers. Here is the website we have been using:
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
The Gunpowder Plot: Did you know?
Who is this man?
Why do we remember him?
Here is a video link that we used in class. Can you remember the 5 facts?
Fun with 2D shapes
We have been sorting 2D shapes using a Venn diagram today -a wonderful happy teacher moment in class as Tess suggested that a semi circle needed to go in both hoops; Oliver slid the hoops together and Sophie named it as a Venn diagram - before the rest of the children said where the semi circle would now fit - just brilliant - applying our knowledge and building on one another’s ideas - what a team!
We also enjoyed exploring shapes using the geoboards. Can you name the shapes we’ve made?
Enjoy our Maths In Action photos! Here’s the link to the geoboards that we used in lesson today.
Here comes Bonfire Night 2017.....
Remember, remember the fifth of November!
This weekend, lots of fireworks have been popping in the sky around my house. In the upcoming week and next weekend I'm sure there will lots more, as the annual celebration of the failure of the Gunpowder Plot takes place.
Earn a merit....can you make a list of 5 words to describe the fireworks (think about the sounds, colours, actions and smells). We will be using these in our English and topic work this week.
Celebrating apples
Homework projects to be proud of - thank you everyone for your hard work.
Our Harvest thanksgiving
Well done to all the children and staff involved in our special Harvest assembly today. Our hall was packed with warmth as we shared our special Harvest message; every child, from our youngest to our oldest, did their best to share our important message.
Thank you to the Year Two children who led our assembly today. You did yourselves so proud;all that practising, loud voices, team work and belief that you could do it - well done.
It was wonderful to have a full hall today. Thank you for supporting us.
With your kind donations, we raised £233.21 for The British Red Cross charity which will go towards helping the Caribbean children affected by the recent hurricanes. Thank you so very much.
Happy half term.
Money - holiday homework
Today we counted the kind and generous donations from the Harvest festival. We sorted the coins in lots of different ways using a Venn diagram to help us. We then added up all of the coins and recorded what we had counted.
Over the holidays, can you play some of the money games on the Topmarks website and make sure that you can name and recognise all of the coins that we use in the United Kingdom. To earn 5 house points make a comment on the website about something you notice about the coins or something you found out about the coins.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/money
For a merit, answer the questions below, either in a comment on the website or bring your answers on a piece of paper to school. Answers to be in by Thursday 2nd November 2017.
1. How many pennies make £1.00?
2. How many 50 pences make £1.00?
3. How many 20 pences make £1.00?
4. How many 10 pences make £1.00?
5. Can you think of 3 different ways to make 50 pence using the U.K. coins?
Grubby Club - week four finale!
What fun! Thank you everyone!
Grubby Club - week 3!
A lovely evening to be outside!
Which apple do you prefer?
In our topic work, as we lead up to Harvest, the children have been investigating which apple they like the best and why. They tasted Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, British Cox and Pink Lady apples. Children used adjectives to describe their appearance, texture and taste.
Which one did you like best?
Great Gold Book work
Time for a puppet show
Grubby Club Week 2
More fun this week in Grubby Club! We have been cleaning out the chickens and filling their water and food, picking up litter, looking after the environment, making bug hotels, weeding the vegetable beds and planting red onions... and of course not forgetting, finding lots of wiggly worms!
Just a reminder that there is no Grubby Club next week as it is parents evening. Grubby Club will carry on the week after. Thank you everyone for your enthusiasm and your help!
Enjoy the photographs! See you in 2 weeks 😊🌳🌿
Making fabulous food
https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/category/topics/food
We had fun using our computing skills today to log on, find a website and select different activities to play. We read the text and clicked on the different tabs to change the games.
The silent k
In our spelling lessons, after learning the word ‘knead’, we have investigated other words which have a silent ‘k’ too.
https://www.spellzone.com/games/index.cfm?wordlist=334
http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/game/en01soun-game-silent-invaders
https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/tricky-words/knit-knot
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/search.aspx?q=spelling
Superhero day 2017
Our annual superhero day for Gold September was another huge success this year.
The children looked amazing and we raised £396 by selling badges and wearing non uniform for this fabulous cause.
Well done to our super children!
Grubby Club #1
HAPPINESS IS.........
Helping the Little Red Hen!
Wow! What great fun was had in Class 2 this morning - the children were sooooo excited!
Mrs Drury & Mrs Swindell led the master class in bread making and taught the children about hand washing, dough making, kneading, proving, rising and cob creating!
Mrs Swindell then loaded them into her car and cooked all 58 rolls.....yes 58 rolls, at her house before delivering them back to school so the children could take them home to have for tea. So very proud of my team - well done! The Little Red Hen would be so very proud!
Really knowing our number bonds to 10, 20 and 100.
This week in our Maths lessons, we have been trying to improve our rapid recall of our number bonds to 10, 20 and 100.We have been using lots of different games to help us. We have thrown dice, ran races in the playground, played interactive games on the ipad, made a rainbow, played Ping Pong and even had a game of Bingo!
Here are some of the interactive links we have been using:
http://www.mathplayground.com/number_bonds_10.html
Embark Federation - Forest schools training
All staff from Embark Federation received excellent training last night on Forest Schools/Outdoor Learning.
This was led by our very own Mr Goodburn at Kilburn Juniors and it was such an inspiring session that even the rain didn't dampen our spirits!
The staff took part in a number of well thought out activities that suit the outdoors rather than the classroom. What made the session even better was the enthusiasm of all of our staff and the creative thinking of how these can be adapted and used for different subjects and ages.
This is all part of our commitment to give our pupils a wide range of opportunities and a first class education.
Huge thank you to Mr Goodburn and all our staff for a memorable training session.
Enjoy the pictures below!
Gold Book
Well done children - our super 7 this week.
We have super mathematicians, children who are caring for our classroom,
children who are settling into year 2 fabulously and a brilliant artist.
Computing in Year 2
Greater than and less than
We've had lots of fun this week using the greater than and less than symbols. We have also been thinking about what makes a number bigger or smaller and then ordering numbers from the highest to the lowest and the smallest to the biggest.
We have been using these games to help us to practise these skills:
Greater than less than
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2numeracy-calculation.html
Crocodiles
https://www.education.com/game/less-than-greater-than/
Coconuts
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/coconut-ordering
We've also been using arrow cards to help us to talk about numbers as hundreds, tens and ones.
Reading and writing numbers to 100 and beyond!
An important target for Year 2 children is to be able to read all numbers to 100 in both figures and words. The children will work hard during the year to be able to write and spell these correctly too. Here we are using the interactive whiteboard games to help us....
Hello to the New Year 2!
What a fun week we've had in Class 2 as we have all been remembering our new routines. I've been super proud of how you have listened and joined in with all of our learning experiences this week.
Thank you for settling well into our new class children, looking forward to seeing you again on Monday!
Welcome back!
As you may have seen, the Smalley school hens have been away over the summer. They have had a holiday at Miss Tulley's house so that they could have some refurbishments on their coop. They are now back at school and ready to see everyone on Monday 😊
