Let's all go on Safari!

This half term, we will be finding out all about Africa. We will be using our skills as geographers to look at atlases and maps to locate Africa and comparing to different countries with their human and physical geographical features. As scientists we will be looking at animals that live in Africa and the different food chains within Africa. 

In English we will be reading different stories including Meerkat Mail and Amazing Grace to further our understanding about Africa and to create stamina for writing.

Please take a look at our half termly overview below to find out more about what we will be learning.

Week 1: 07/01/2022

It was lovely to see all the children settle back into Year 2 really well and showing a great attitude to their learning. We started reading our new book this week called 'Meerkat Mail' and wrote a postcard to Sunny (the main character in the story) about what we got up to in the Christmas holidays and what our school is like. We also started our new multiplication topic in maths and looked at creating equal groups and making arrays to help us count objects. 

Week 2: 14/01/2022

This week there was a mysterious box that had turned up in our classroom. It was filled with different things including Sunny the meerkat, an ancient looking plate, some clothes with very detailed and colourful patterns and a giraffe. We created posters for what we found and what we wanted to explore further. As geographers we have been locating Africa on a map (which is where we think all the items in our box came from!) We then looked at the human and physical features of Egypt and compared them to England. 

In English we have been working hard to write our postcard as Sunny as he has been on an adventure around our school. We thought carefully about where he went, what he did, what he ate and what he liked or disliked about it. 

In maths we have started to learn what the multiplication symbol looks like and how we can look at equal groups to write a multiplication number sentence. 

Week 3: 21/01/2022

We had lots of fun in maths this week learning our 2, 5 and 10 times table. We spotted that for each one it's the same as counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. In English we learnt the story of Meerkat Mail and the innovated the story by changing the places Sunny visited to places around our school. We learnt about past tense verbs to describe what Sunny did in each place and how he got there. 

Week 4: 28/01/2022

In maths this week we have been learning how to divide and what division means. We've learnt how to divide by sharing and grouping and starting to understand how this links to our times tables and multiplication. In English we started a new story this week called 'Amazing Grace' and wrote a diary entry about what she gets up to in the story. We've been looking at all types of animals that can be found in Kenya and Egypt and sorting them into carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. 

Week 6: 11/02/2022

What an exciting week we have had this week in Year 2! On Thursday we had an African drumming and African dancing workshop all morning. It was really great to see the children immersed in our learning enquiry and in a different culture. Everyone got to play as a class on a djembe drum and then try some of the other African instruments too. Both classes really enjoyed the workshops and playing the different musical instruments. We also had a lot of fun creating our Egyptian and Kente art. The children created some beautiful designs and printed them onto fabric using printing ink and the rollers. They were able to look at some of the different Egyptian and Kente designs and replicate them in their own work.