Spring Week 2: London and creativity

Hello Class 2 Parents,

Tomorrow I am hoping to add some photographs of the children's work this week - I need to get them from the Ipad!

This week, our first full week of term, has been excellent. It has been good to get back into a routine with the children.

The start of our new story involved looking at London. The children looked at a map of the U.K. and named its countries. Then we zoomed in on London and some of its key features. In groups, the children build a feature using a range of building materials - from lego, to wooden blocks, to large plastic bricks. Our school value this half term is creativity, so this was  a great way to start. 

Tomorrow (Friday) we will be comparing modern London to London in the 1600s. 

In our writing lessons the focus has been on poetry. The children wrote some winter poems using the -ing suffix, and thinking about the five senses. We are having a bit of a focus on correct pencil holds this half term and we have some new pencils in class to help with this (they are triangular and so encourage the correct hold). It would be good if you could encourage this at home. One of these two pencil holds are fine - the tripod grasp involves two fingers and the thumb, the quadropod involves four fingers and a thumb. 

In maths:

Year 1 have been looking at numbers to 20 and learning to talk about tens and ones. This is the basis of place value work. They have also been learning bonds to 8 - homework this week is to play this game - select '8 'when given the choice. If your child is fluent in their number bonds, then create some fact families together. Draw a house, and in it write all of the number facts that belong in one family for 8. For example,  7 + 1 = 8    1 + 7 = 8    8 - 1 = 7    8 = 7 = 1. You can do this in any way you like. 

Year 2 have also been revisiting number bonds to 8 (and so could play the above game to practise). They have also been continuing work on multiplication, looking at the X symbol and what it means. They have begun to look at arrays, and their homework is here (it will be in their books as usual). 

In phonics and spellings:

The phonics group looked at 'ey' (as in donkey, monkey, honey) and 'au' (as in autumn). Their spellings are here and will be in their books. 

The spellings group learn the rule drop the y and add an i to add the suffixes
-ed -er -est to words ending in y. Their spellings are here and will be in their books.

We've had a really good week - I have a feeling spring term will be a good one!

From Mrs Simpson