Living and Learning: Body Image
This week in Living and Learning, we talked about what body image is and what might influence it.
The children created a variety of definitions but in the end all agreed that ‘Body image is our idea of how our body looks and how we think it looks to others. This can include our feelings and thoughts about our height, weight, shape, skin colour, appearance or attractiveness’.
We then went on to discuss potential influences. Here are the ones we thought of:
- Social Media
- TV
- Celebrities
- Friends
- Family
- News
- Ourselves
- Fashion
- Experience (e.g. sports clubs, school, parties)
Help at home: Discuss how each of the influences might impact our body images.
Lotherton Hall Trip
On Wednesday, Year 2 enjoyed a day out of school to Lotherton Hall. It was jam-packed day of sunshine, smiles and wildlife!
As part of our science learning this half term, we enjoyed a workshop called ‘who eats who’. In the workshop we looked at lots of science vocabulary: herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, prey, predator and producer.
The Year 2 children were brilliant at identifying skulls from different animals by looking at the size, teeth and features.
Before we left, we enjoyed time climbing and enjoying the park grounds and playgrounds.
Help at home by discussing your child’s biological knowledge. This links well with this week’s Talk Time homework.
Design and technology: food
This week, Year 2 have been using their design and technology food preparation skills to make our latest recipe, fruit bars.
After the cooking, we carried out the evaluation of the product and we enjoyed the tasting all together.
I liked the fruit bars because you could really taste the coconut and honey but next time I would change the apricots more dates or raisins.
I liked it because it was really crunchy. I would change it next time by adding blackberries.
I didn’t like the bars because of the seeds. Next time, I would leave the seeds out.
I liked the bars because it was sweet from the honey.
I really liked it because I could all the ingredients. Next time, I would take the seeds out and I would replace them with watermelon.
I liked the fruit bars as I liked the apricots but I would eliminate the seeds and replace them with dried berries.
It was so good that I want another one.
Help at home: Ask your child/children what food preparation skills they have used in this learning and can they demonstrate these at home.
We are biologists!
This half term in Science, we are biologists.
We are learning about teeth and eating.
Last week, we conducted a comparative test to see the impact of different liquids on our teeth. We used an egg as the ‘tooth’ as egg shells are similar to teeth enamel.
We placed eggs in orange juice, Coca-Cola and vinegar. A further egg we covered in toothpaste and placed in Coca-Cola to see if it protected the egg.
We left the eggs over the weekend and observed and recorded our results when we came back to school on Monday.
We found that the Coca-Cola had discoloured the first egg but the toothpaste had protected the other egg.
The orange juice had caused the shell of the egg to start cracking and decaying!
Help at home by asking your child what could happen to their teeth if they drink sugary drinks and forget to brush their teeth!
Living and Learning – RSE
Over the last 3 weeks in Year 4, we have explored relationships and change.
We discussed the fact that we have relationships with lots of people. For example, our family, friends, people we meet through clubs like leaders etc. These relationships should be happy and healthy. We talked about this might look like:
- We trust each other.
- We are kind to each other.
- We listen to each other.
- We try to help each other if we can.
But what happens if this becomes unhappy and unhealthy? If you can’t resolve the problems between you in a respectful way, then you can ask a trusted adult to help!
Sometimes we might need a change and change can seem scary when it’s new. We looked at the different stages of human life and the class discussed how our lives change over time. For example, when we are born, we have no responsibilities and our grown ups look after us constantly. As we grow older, we have more freedom and we realised that with freedom comes more responsibilities like cooking for yourself, having a job and learning to drive.
We decided that change is good because it takes us outside our comfort zone and lets us try new things!
Help at home by discussing a change that is coming up soon. How do you feeling about moving up to Year 5?
Living and Learning: Relationships
Over the past 3 weeks, we have had a plethora of RSE lessons covering a range of topics. This week, we talked about relationships and what makes them healthy as well as families and what makes ours different and unique.
To start, we defined a relationship as “the way in which two or more people or things are connected, or the state of being connected” and then talked about the different relationships we have in our lives. Then, we discussed healthy and unhealthy relationships and thought about how we could support and improve them. Here are a few ideas:
- being kind, considerate and respectful
- being honest
- listening to each other
- respecting personal space, boundaries and privacy
- accepting others’ differences
We then talked about similarities and differences between our families and focused in our why our families are important to us. Here are a few responses. Families provide:
- love
- care
- support
- food
- shelter
- safety
Help at home: Talk with your child about the different relationships they have.
Summer 2: Week 3
Literacy and history
This week, we’ve been reading Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. After reading the story, we worked together to sequence the story pictures.
Our word of the week was thoughtful. We talked about what the word means and how it links to our story. All week, we’ve been thinking about how we can be thoughtful at school.
For our writing activity, we thought about who we would share a shell with and why.
Yesterday, we looked at some past and present seaside holiday photographs. We talked about similarities and differences.
Awais – They both have the sea.
Lucas – They both are busy.
Huey – This one has a little boat.
Myla – There’s no umbrellas.
Eleanor – One has an island and the other doesn’t.
We compared other things such as clothing, food and activities.
Help at home: Find a picture of you at the seaside and compare it to one of these photographs. You could even ask an adult at home if they can remember their seaside holidays.
PE
With sports day just around the corner, we’ve been busy practising our races. They showed fantastic determination and teamwork especially when doing the relay and three-legged race. We are super excited for sports day!
Help at home: Practise your races in the garden!
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem is called I Have a Little Frog. Miss Gaunt has been doing an excellent job at looking after our tadpoles and now they have legs! We check on them everyday to see if they’ve changed.
Click here to watch the poem.
We are designers!
Last week in DT we were testing the strength of different shapes. We made a triangular prism, a cuboid and and a cylinder and placed books on them to see how strong they were.
The cylinder was the strongest because it held 36 books before it collapsed.
This everyone made a cylinder and we put 6 together to make a superstructure to see if it would be stronger. It held 175 books! Everyone was very excited to see how strong just 6 bits a card could be!
Then we put 24 cylinders together and tested if it was strong enough to stand on! We were amazed to find out it was! Although, it did collapse when Mr McGriffiths stood on it!!
Help at home by asking your child how to make a cylinder using card and tape. You could also think about your design for your chair for baby bear!
Living and Learning: relationships
For the last few weeks, our Living and Learning lessons and circle times have been all about happy and healthy relationships between our friends, peers and families.
Here we thought about different words that we associate with families and we read some texts about how not all families are the same and that is ok. The children enjoyed sharing special members of their family.
The Great big book of families by Mary Hoffman
We have already learnt about consent in terms of permission seeking when online but here we thought about it when we are with others. We practised showing how we give and don’t give consent and how we can also change our mind if we want to.
Finally, you will have seen the children have brought home the NSPCC Pants Underwear rule. We revisit this important learning every year.
Help at home: read the NSPCC pants underwear rule with your child/children and think about how this keeps you safe. This parent guide is available too.
Maths Murder Mystery
On Monday, some of Year 6 did something different in Maths: we solved a murder mystery!
The class were given some problem solving clues and had to figure out who the killer was. The clues involved different capacities such as litres and millilitres, grams and kilograms and centimetres.
The final question involved finding the area of biscuits, revealing that the murderer had been Daphne. Well done to the whole class as they figured it out!
Help at home by including your child in cooking and baking so that they are used to different measurements.