Design & technology: food
This week, Year 2 have been using their design and technology food preparation skills to make our latest recipe, fruit bars.
Some of the skills we used to make our product included:
- snipping
- mixing
- measuring
- mashing
- using the oven and hob safely
After the cooking, we carried out the evaluation of the product and we enjoyed the tasting our product together.
Help at home: Ask your child/children what food preparation skills they have used in this learning and can they demonstrate these using the recipe they have brought home.
Living and Learning: Being healthy themed week
It was a busy end to our being healthy themed week with lots of visitors to support this key aspect of Living and Learning.
Matt, from Leeds Well School Partnership, visited to deliver an assembly all about being healthy. There were key messages about being active, sleep and healthy eating. We also got to hear our two winning entries that have now been published in a book titled Move Well looking at children’s relationship with physical activity and sport. Well done to Florence and Soham.
Catering Leeds, who provide our school meals, came to deliver their Bushtucker trial workshop all about healthy eating. Here, the children were able to taste blind taste and blind feel different fruits and vegetables. There were lots of new foods to explore.
Foot tech, who support our PE curriculum, came to deliver some of the games which we’ve enjoyed this year in a fun and active way.
Our final visitor was Hazel from D:side, a health charity. We started by thinking about the three main things that we need to put in our body – food water and air. We also looked at different parts of our body and what their job is. Finally, we thought about our emotions and used this car wash activity to share compliments to our friends while they walked down the ‘car wash’.
Another way we’ve thought about our emotional health is mindfulness and ways we can calm our mind. The children enjoyed using their glitter bottles to watch the glitter settle just like our emotions. We hope the children enjoy using these at home.
In our circle time, the children shared the ways they are going to improve their health following our learning.
I’m going to play outside more.
I’m going to drink more water.
I’m going to have less screen time and TV time.
I’m going to go to bed earlier.
I’m going to eat less sweets and chocolate.
I’m going to be more active on my way to school.
I’m going to try new foods.
I’m going to make sure I keep my body clean.
Help at home: support your child to complete the online health questionnaire homework to share your child’s views on health at school.
Topic: Design and technology
This week, Year 2 have been busy building chairs for baby bear to sit on. We had a practice last week using paper however we realised this material was not strong enough. This week we used cardboard. This was a much stronger material. We followed out designs carefully. and made some very stable structures.
When we finished, it was time to evaluate our chairs and see if they were stable enough for baby bear to sit on.
Being Healthy: physical activity
What a fantastic start to being healthy week. We have has some great visitors in school delivering some physical activity sessions.
On Monday, to kick start the week, we had two physical activity sessions.
Daisy from BMMA delivered a fun and active martial arts session.
Later in the afternoon, it was wonderful to see the whole school participating in skipping on the playground led by Katie from skipping school. Thank you to all the parents that came to support their children.
Tuesday we took part in a relaxing, mindful yoga session.
Today, the children took part in a basketball session and a hip-hop session. The children represented our school brilliantly and thoroughly enjoyed learning some new skills.
Throughout the week, the children are taking part in a personal best challenge. Some children choose the stork balance and some choose speed bounce. On Friday, the children will bring their scores home and you may wish to donate £1 to our school charity for their efforts.
Living & Learning: body image
Our latest Living and Learning sessions have been focussed on body image and we started this learning by thinking about what is special about our own identity and how we can describe our own identity in terms of our physical appearance.
Our self portraits show just how unique we all are.
We also thought of other ways we might be different, on the inside as well as the outside. For example, we don’t all have the same personality and characteristics and we have different interests and hobbies.
We agreed that being different is a good thing and it should be celebrated as it would be boring if we were all the same!
In our circle time, we thought about good things about ourselves…
I am alive.
I can be on stage confidently.
I have a good imagination.
I care about the environment.
I care for others and help my friends.
I am funny.
…and what we like about our bodies.
I am flexible.
I like my long hair.
I am unique.
I can see and hear.
I like my eye colour.
My brain helps me think.
Help at home: discuss this learning with your child. Encourage them to think about their strengths and what they like about who they are.
Trip to Temple Newsam
Year 2 have had a wonderful day today visiting Temple Newsam Farm! We started off the day with a look around the farm and a visit to the playground.
Before lunch, we had a lovely walk around the park and saw some ducklings on the pond.
After lunch we headed back to the farm to see some teeny tiny piglets, some were just 2 days old! We learnt that despite their stereotype, pigs are one of the cleanest farmyard animals. This introduced our Design and Technology workshop about the Three Little Pigs. Pigs make nests to live in, so we decided to make some structures, much like the houses in the Three Little Pigs. We had to construct our own structure out of sticks (just like one of the three little pigs!). We tried really hard and we were really impressed with their structures.
We were very impressed with the children’s behaviour, engagement and attitude all day. They represented Moortown Primary impeccably.
WE HAD AN AWESOME DAY!!
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.
When thinking about our families, we thought about how we show we care for each other. 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.
Numbots
With six Numbots certificates awarded this week, it’s great to see the children continuing to work hard at home to achieve their next level.
Certificates are awarded every Tuesday so let’s see how many more we can achieve before the end of the year.
Super skippers
This week, Year 2 took part in our Skipping School KS1 festival at Leeds Trinity University against four other Leeds schools.
The children have been learning lots of individual and group skipping skills and today it was great to see just how much the children have progressed.
All the class worked hard as a team to earn as many skips as possible in their events. Dexter’s 99 single bounce skips in 30 seconds certainly helped to contribute to our total!
After all the points (skips) were added up, the winning school was announced…
We were so excited and proud to hear we had won!
A huge well done to all the children for fantastic determination, resilience and team work. They have worked so hard by practising in PE, at lunchtime and playtime, at skipping after-school club and even at home!
The festival has been really fun. I feel happy.
I like it because I’ve learnt lots of different skips and people encouraged me.
I feel proud of my skipping.
This is the third year in a row our Year 2 classes have achieved this and we feel very proud of their success.
Design and Technology – What makes a stable structure?
First, we looked at the design process.
PLAN – MAKE – EVALUATE
This week, we have been looking at what makes a stable structure.
A stable structure is strong, has as flat base and is free-standing.
We moulded playdough into different 3D shapes and made predictions about which would be the most stable and why. We placed each structure on a flat surface (a whiteboard) and tipped it. We measured how high we could lift the board until the structure started to roll off.
Help at home by looking at structures in the environment and trying to use our topic vocabulary to describe the structures.