Welcome to Squirrel Class!

Our class teachers are Mrs Whiteside and Miss Salkeld. Our class TAs are Miss Tonna, Mrs Matthews and Miss Pynn.

We have an exciting and fun-filled year ahead! We will be going on fantastic school trips, having exciting visitors into school, exploring our local environment, studying thrilling topics and celebrating your marvellous work. 

This year our termly topics are: -

Term 1 - Continents and Hot and Cold Regions of the World

Term 2 - The Great Fire of London

Term 3 - Explorers

Term 4 - Non EU and UK Comparison

Term 5 - Aviators 

Term 6 - Local Area Study

We are looking forward to exploring these topics with you. 

Squirrels Class Blog

Term 1 w/c 5th September

We are all really excited to have started back in Year 2 as Squirrels, although we were a bit nervous too.

We have started work on ‘The Gigantic Turnip’. We had a great drama session pretending to be all the animals helping the old man and woman to pull up the turnip.

We’ve had a couple of soggy days and loved discovering all the wet play activities we have in the classroom.

In Art we have learnt how to do a self-portrait by looking at how to use guidelines to make sure we put all our features in the right places.

Outdoor Learning has also started - it was brilliant and we have found out how to make friendship bracelets.

This afternoon we are beginning our Science topic and are really looking forward to that.

It has been lovely to see friends again and be back in school.

Squirrels Tribute to Queen Elizabeth II

Squirrels produced some beautiful work today after yesterday's sad news.

Term 1  - w/c 12th September

We have started writing the story of 'The Gigantic Turnip'. We have been learning about alliteration and making sure we are putting the story in the right order. Miss Salkeld and Mrs Whiteside have been really impressed with our writing skills.

In Maths we are becoming experts at problem solving. We have been helping Tiny the Tortoise to sort out all of his problems. We have been counting in 10s, forwards and backwards, partitioning and finding missing numbers.

We played a great game called 'Silly Spinners' in Science and ended up combining some very strange materials and objects - we invented a pair of glass socks and know why this is not a suitable material to use.

We have a lot of wobbly teeth in our class this week and some have even fallen out!

In Art we looked at 'The Umbrellas' by the French artist Pierre Auguste Renoir. We experimented with runny blue paint to see what effects we could use to make it look like rain.

Term 1  - w/c 19th September

We had a longer weekend as the country paused for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Some of us laid flowers to remember her whilst many of us watched the day on the television. We returned to school on Tuesday and began our day with Outdoor Learning. We've had such fun and enjoyed making journey sticks which we all took home with us.

In Maths we have been comparing numbers and practising recognising the symbols for more than and fewer than. We've begun writing our own versions of 'The Gigantic Turnip' and have been very creative mapping out our stories.

In Art we have been colour mixing to create shades of light and dark which will be used in our umbrella pictures inspired by Renoir's 'The Umbrellas'.

Term 1 - w/c 17th October

We had the best time at Perry Court Farm on Wednesday!

We walked from school to Perry Court Farm through the fields. We were brilliant and managed to dodge all the stinging nettles along the way. As we arrived at the farm we saw geese, donkeys, chickens, pigs, cats and sheep.

Heidi spoke to us all and explained to us all about the different types of apples grown at the farm. She told us fascinating facts about how the flowers on the apple trees are pollinated.

After we picked our own Bramley apples from the orchard to cook in school as an apple crumble. Then they served us apple juice and an apple to eat at their cafe tables. It was lovely! We walked back to school just as wonderfully as we travelled there.

Term 2 - w/c 7th November 2022

After a short week last week we are now back to being busy and excited by our new topics.

In History, we have begun our learning journey finding out all about The Great Fire of London. We enjoyed creating a timeline to see how different events in the past and events in our lifetimes all fit together in a sequence of time.

We have asked lots of questions and are beginning to be time detectives, finding out our own answers by listening and looking at evidence. It's been amazing!

We have enjoyed giving clear instructions in Computing and learning the value of this when thinking about how we communicate with computers. We had to draw pictures following verbal instructions  - we had some very different interpretations of what the instructions meant but learnt lots about using the correct language.

We have also begun to think about Christmas songs (shhhh!) We know it's early.

!

Term 2 - w/c 14th November 2022

We have enjoyed a very messy Science investigation this week. We made slime and goo to test the properties of malleable materials and had some very interesting conversations about what we considered to be solid materials.

It was quite tricky to decide even when we had read the scientific definition.

In English we did some fantastic drama works. We created freeze frames and soundscapes to show what life would have been like on 2nd September 1666 for those people, both rich and poor who were trying to escape the Great Fire of London. This subject has inspired many of us. Edmund even made ship's biscuits at home, just as Thomas Farriner did in his bakery in Pudding Lane for the Navy.

We have listened to our Nativity Songs in preparation for beginning rehearsals in earnest next week - be prepared to hear us singing and humming new tunes at home very shortly.

Term 2  - w/c 21st November 2022

The Nativity is exciting us all at the moment as we are now learning songs, dances and learning lines in preparation for our fantastic play.

In computing we have been learning about algorithms, creating sequences of instructions for the 'Bee-Bot' floor robots that we have in school. We have been working on working out where an algorithm might take the robot and we are pretty impressive at making great predictions.

Maths has challenged us this week to learning about exchanging when subtracting 2 digit numbers. We've all been working really hard using maths manipulatives to help us understand and have had some brilliant eureka moments as we have begun to understand the concept.

One of favourite afternoons this week was spent as a year group listening to Florence, one of our parents, who is a firefighter for Kent Fire and Rescue. She came to talk to us about her work and to show us some of the fascinating equipment that she uses. We all wrote some brilliant questions during our English lesson to ask her. It was an amazing visit and very exciting!

Term 3 W/C 9th January 2023

In Maths we have continued learning about shapes. We have been sorting them according to different properties such as numbers of vertices, edges and faces and shapes with flat and curved sides.

We have begun writing our own Owl Babies stories and will be finishing this next week.

We are very excited to be going to the School Disco on Friday after school and showing everyone our groovy moves.

Squirrels have been working really hard to improve our handwriting. We are practising every day and in all our books. If we do really well we get a sticker.

On Wednesday we had a fascinating assembly all about our new Nature Table. We can bring in exciting things that we have found when we are out and about to put on the table.

Wolfie was in school on Wednesday... we are looking forward to seeing him around school once he has settled in.

Term 3 - w/c 23rd January

This week we have been busy learning about our Rights, in particular the right to relax and play. We spent some time learning how to draw a sausage dog to exercise our right to relaxation. We thought of lots of examples of things we do in school that are relaxing.

We've been doing lots of tricky work learning about money. We found counting money challenging. You can help us by encouraging us to count piles of change at home and check how accurate we are. 

We are continuing to discover more about different explorers in History and the significance of their discoveries. So far we have learnt about Christopher Columbus and Matthew Henson. Columbus discovered the Americas in error and took a lot of their gold. We have had lots of discussions about whether he was a hero or a villain.

We are looking forward to next week when we will be showing you everything that we have been learning about in our special Class Assembly!

Term 3 - w/c 30th January

What a week! Not only have we been working really hard on new topics such as multiplication in Maths and extending our knowledge of Explorers even further, we have been rehearsing in between times.

On Friday morning the moment finally came for Squirrel's Class Assembly! We sat nervously but quietly confident as the rest of the school and our parents sat to watch our performance. What a performance it was! It went brilliantly. Everyone sang, read their lines and proudly shared all the fantastic work we had been doing since we joined Year 2 in September and we ended with a huge round of applause from our wonderful audience. Thank to to all of you who were able to come and watch and for sharing how much you enjoyed it with our adults in class.

Week commencing 20th February