Tuesday 9th April
Look………. two more butterflies today!
Look…… we have one butterfly today!
What does ‘belong‘ mean? Well, during RE lessons, in Year Two, we have been finding out just that! We discovered we all belong to Mill Hill Primary School – we’re just one big, happy family! Year two pupils also drew pictures to illustrate the many different clubs they belong to, such as: Rainbows, Scouts, Sunderland Football Club, swimming clubs, dance clubs, The Youth Box Project and sooooooooooooo many more! Year Two pupils were keen to tell each other how it made them feel and why it is important to belong to a family at home, school and the community.
We linked this concept of a sense of belonging with Christianity and the Easter story and visited our local church – St Matthew’s. It was a very special occasion as baby Cole (a baby doll) was being christened. We all dressed up in our very best clothes to celebrate this very important ceremony. We pretended to be either parents, godparents or friends and family of baby Cole. Reverend David Tolhurst helped Mill Hill pupils understand the importance of this ceremony to Christians and, throughout our visit, identified symbols and practices associated with baptism.
Mill Hill children – including my class – have been very lucky to have had a free taster session how to play cricket. This is an initiative from England and Wales Cricket Board aimed at providing primary school children with a great first experience in cricket.
My class (Y2DO) loved it! We were the first to ‘have a go’ in the school and thoroughly enjoyed practicing individual skills and small team games.
Look at our models. Every child that registers will receive a backpack full of goodies including a cricket bat, ball, personalised shirt, cap and activity book all sent straight to their door. WOW! I do hope this, short but fun taster session, has inspired some of our pupils to join All Stars Cricket at a club near them.
Can you guess what we’ve got in our classroom? That’s right, caterpillars – very hungry caterpillars! They are like eating machines and are growing soooooooooo quickly that they’ve had to shed their skins so many times!
Every day, we come into the classroom and can’t wait to see any changes in the life cycle of this incredible creature! Observing them closely has been amazing. We check the temperature daily – it must not be too cold or hot – between 21-26 degrees is a perfect temperature!
After shedding their skin for one final time and making a ‘j’ shape, we realized they were ready to build a cocoon. Now we are waiting for more magic to begin! When will the butterflies hatch? Keep watching this space for more information.
Following on from purposefully measuring grams, our class looked in and around school grounds for objects that they thought weighed more than 1 kg. What fab detectives they were – most of their estimates were right! Pupils soon realized that using balancing scales didn’t always work well – the objects they were trying to weigh were either too big, bulky or heavy so other weighing scales were needed.
MMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm! For Easter, in my class, we have been making and baking delicious chocolate rice crispy cup cakes. We applied our measurement skills and, with a partner, had to read scales and measure to the nearest 5 gram carefully. We also had to use our knowledge of how many seconds are in one minute to program the microwave to melt the the chocolate. And finally, we had to place the cakes in to arrays and calculate how many cakes we’d made in total and how many mini Easter eggs we had used. Then the best bit of all……. eating them! MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm……….scrumptious!
What fun my class has had learning about China and Chinese New Year. We linked our learning with other areas of the curriculum. In Maths, we were teased whilst solving a seven 2D shaped puzzle called a Tangram, that was invented by the Chinese. We also applied our measuring skills to draw rectangles 10cm by 5cm to make a collage flag of China. In English, we used pictorial instructions to make a Chinese lantern and wrote fabulous retells inspired by traditional Chinese stories. Learning about fantastic human landmarks in China, also inspired us to write and persuade Barnaby Bear to visit them! And there’s more…… to celebrate the Year of the Pig we investigated colour mixing using water paints. Oh, and whilst visiting the Oriental Museum, we also worked in small teams to build a mini clay terracotta warrior. WOW!!!! We are experts now!
Lots of fun was had dancing and playing party games. We even had a special visit from a man dressed in a bright, red suit!
