Our fantastic Explorers of the week have worked well in a team and worked hard to make sure they finish every task set.

This weeks Explorers of the week have shown amazing determination and a  positive attitude towards their learning.

As part of our Explorers topic we have created a ship in our role play area to explore different islands. We are looking forward to developing our speaking and listening skills, taking on different roles and finding out about countries that explorers discovered. 

On Monday we went to St Chads Church as part of our Religious Studies. The Rev. Jackie Calow talked to us all about what happens in church and her role. We took part in a pretend wedding, Christening and Jackie showed us how a  funeral was conducted using Shrek. Then we all searched church to complete a quiz and wrote prayers that we sent to God in a balloon.

We also got to have communion with blackcurrant juice and bread! We have been reflecting on our learning back in school and have discussed the Christian cerebration's of birth, the end of life and commitment to others.

Come and have a look at the finished aboriginal art work displayed on hessian hung

up in the classroom, it looks amazing!

We are enjoying our topic on Australia and have been busy researching the country , finding out where it is in the world and what the weather is like, finding out key facts from a range of information including pictures, text and diagrams. 

We read information about Kangaroos and wrote our own information leaflets about them. 

We enjoyed finding our about Aboriginal art and remembered from our art work about Queen Victoria that it was called pointillism.

We enjoyed sketching pictures of wild plants we found in our school garden. We developed our sketching skills using line and tone. We talked about how the flowers had grown there, learning the new word dispersal.

During European week we have been focusing on the country Spain. We have been developing our understanding of the Spanish language, using language to greet people, asking how they are, learning our numbers and colours as well as names of food and drink. 

Comparing the traditional food in Spain with the food in England.

We have looked at the continents around the world and understand that Spain is in Europe. We all worked together to create a map of the world showing the different continents. We used our sewing skills to attach the felt countries to the fabric. We identified where Spain and England were and talked about the types of transport we would need to get to Spain and how long it might take.  

We have identified the capital cities in Spain and some of us have been on holiday to these places. We have also created Spanish flags and used the colours from the flag to create a fantastic Father's Day card. Happy Father's Day to all our St Chads daddies!

We looked at a traditional drink they serve in Spain Sangria and made our own fruity version. We used the internet to find out what ingredients we needed and Mrs  Wood went to the supermarket with our shopping list. We all helped to write a set of instructions to show our understanding of how we make the drink before writing our own instructions. The children developed their maths skills talking about irregular 3D shapes and looking at the symmetry of the different fruits.  The year 2 children developed their understanding of capacity being the waiters and measuring out the drinks.  

We all enjoyed our drink of Sangria! Yummy!

We loved Flamenco dancing to Spanish music and used castanets and maracas to add percussion to the music.

We enjoyed learning about Spanish artists Milo and Picasso and recreated some of their art work.

We used paint, pastels or collage to recreate Milo's cockerel.

We found Picasso's cubist art especially interesting.

We shared our learning with the rest of the school in our assembly at the end of the week and enjoyed learning facts about other countries too!

We have lots of  new Explorers who have worked hard to learn something new about our topic, persevered with things they have found difficult and worked as part of a team to solve problems.

Look at them on our Explorers board in the classroom. 

This week we have been working on a design and technology project using the TASC wheel. The children have had to use their problem solving skills to help save an explorer who had become stranded on a desert island.

Firstly we shared our ideas on the thinking floor mat. We decided that the best idea would be to build a raft for the explorer so he could sail off the island.
We generated some design ideas by thinking about which materials would work best and looking at examples of different rafts.After that we picked our best design idea and built our own models.

We tested all the models in water to see if they would float, which nearly all of them did. It was very exciting!
Finally we evaluated how we had done by saying what was good about our raft and what we could do to improve it.