Art and D&T Week

Last week was Art and D&T Week in Primary. We did lots of exciting things, including making circus collages, using oil pastels on acitate, planning story boxes for our Traction Man work, meeting a professional artist and sculpting clay animals.

Here are some photos showing our work with the oil pastels:

This is Sophie Bacquié.

She is a local artist. She spent the day with us and showed us some famous animal-themed artworks that she finds interesting. Also, we looked at some of her paintings. Then she helped us make our own artwork using ink and pens. Here are some examples.

This is one of Sophie's paintings.

 



Circus face paints

Our new IPC topic is called 'The Circus is Coming to Town". As the entry point we watched some performances by 'Le Cirque de Soleil'. We read some books about the circus including non-fiction books and 

We looked at pictures of clowns and tried to 'read' their expressions. Working out whether they were happy, sad, puzzled, surprised... We will be painting each other's faces with clown make-up next week, so we each made a plan for our partner to work from.

Introduction to forces

Our science topic this half-term is 'Forces'. We had a ball of modelling clay and we used pushes and pulls to change its shape. We twisted, stretched, squashed, pinched, rolled and flattened the clay. When we twisted we could feel one hand pushing and the other pulling. 
Then we drew circus acrobats on card. Using the clay we made a curved base so the acrobats could be flipped over but would flip upright by themselves. 
We explored how to make cars speed up, slow down and change direction. These photos show us working, exploring, discussing and testing.
Introduction to forces on PhotoPeach

The Diary of a Killer Cat by Anne Fine

We have been reading Tuffy's diary. These photos show us acting out the first scene from the book where Tuffy, the cat, drags a dead bird into the house. We 'freeze-framed' the scene then each character came alive to speak their thoughts aloud.

Christmas photos slide show

Enjoy these photos which show some of the things Year 2 were doing in the run-up to Christmas.

Native American Cinderella and our dreamcatchers

We shared some Native American stories, including a version of Cinderella called 'The Rough-faced Girl'. Both the story and the pictures were really different to the other versions we had read.  

We watched a short video of a storyteller sharing a traditional Native American tale. You can watch it here.

We learnt about the importance of dreamcatchers in Native American culture. They believe that if the dreamcatcher is hung over the bed the good dreams will be caught and will slide down the strings and feathers to the sleeper. Meanwhile the bad dreams get caught and held in the net and disappear with the light of day.

We made our own dreamcatchers. 

Cinderella stories

We have been reading different versions of the Cinderella story and before the Christmas holidays we can look forward to reading one or two more.  These are the versions we've shared so far. Which was your favourite Year 2?

Dreamtime stories

As part of our IPC unit called 'Stories People Tell' we have been sharing stories from around the world. Including from Australia, where the Dreamtime stories are a very important pGoogleart of Aboriginal culture. These stories are often about animals and nature. We listened to one about a frog called Tiddalik. Here is another version of the story for you to share at home. 

Stories People Tell

In our IPC topic we are learning about stories. Old stories, new stories, stories from around the world, fairytales, true stories, myths, legends...
This week we have been especially interested in the Cinderella story and have read lots of different versions from countries around the world.
Cinderella is a very popular story in our class but maybe you have a different favourite fairytale. Please take a moment to fill in our survey.

Pass The Blog

This week we are taking part in Pass The Blog. Click here to find out what we have been doing.

Christmas (yes, already!!)

We are already getting some artwork ready to decorate the hall for the Christmas Fair and the concerts. Can you guess what our finished picture will show? Clue - think of a Christmas carol.

 

Maths with DST

We share our school building with a German primary school. We see each other around the school and in the playground every day, but we don't normally have our lessons together. This year Frau Mira and Miss Ash decided we would meet up on Mondays to work on some maths tasks together. We started off with some activities on 2D shape.