An action packed week in Y2

Hopefully your children came home from school yesterday, buzzing from the excitement of a visit from our local fire service. The children were given a talk by the fire officers on fire safety in the home. They were given a small homework booklet and when they complete it and return it to school, they will be awarded a certificate. It would be fantastic if you could follow up this learning at home by talking to them about fire procedures in your own homes. Do they know where the smoke alarms are fitted? What they sound like and what to do if they go off?




In Maths this week, the children have finished their unit on number bonds to ten and we have now moved on to doubling and halving. The children have been fantastic at partitioning the numbers, doubling and then recombining. Could you ask them to show you how they do it at home?
We are continuing mental maths Mondays and next week will be trialing some new mental arithmetic papers :-) In Maths, we will be moving on to halving numbers and eventually multiplication and division, making the links between repeated addition / subtraction. Please encourage your child to choose this topic when doing their maths whizz homework as this will help to reinforce the work we are doing in school and after studying the maths whizz reports it would seem children are playing it safe and choosing the topics they feel confident in. They need to try all the different topics as this will improve their maths age.
In Literacy this week, we have started a new unit on letter writing. The children have enjoyed listening to and joining in with 'John Patrick Norman McHennessey' by John Burningham. They will be learning how to write letters, postcards and emails and will be correctly labeling and addressing their letters. It would be great if they could learn their addresses but we will have copies in school too just in case. Your children are continuing to learn stage 4,5 or 6 phonics and the spellings they bring home are linked to the sounds we have been studying this week.
We have just started reading a new class book which is 'The BFG' by Roald Dahl just as the new trailer for the film is released so hopefully we will have it finished before it comes out at the cinema.:-)
The children are continuing to enjoy apparatus in PE and have been mixing paint to create colours for mountain ranges - they did an excellent job and created some beautiful colours. In RE this week, we have introduced our new topic of Islam and were lucky enough to be a given a talk by one of own pupils on his religion including the importance of prayer and even a demonstration! The children were very respectful, listened well and asked some interesting questions.
In Science, we are continuing our topic on materials and their properties and in topic continuing our work on continents and oceans of the world. 
During music in Mrs Wales and Siggs' class, the children enjoyed finding the 'pulse' of a new piece of music and even had a go at playing the xylophone! They did this really well. A few of the children learning recorder in school also accompanied whilst the rest of the group sang.
We also had a visit today from five evacuees, fleeing the blitzed streets of London, Coventry and Sheffield. They came in to our class and stayed for the morning with the aim of giving them a real insight into what it was like for a child during WWII.
We hope you all have a restful and relaxing weekend and look forward to seeing you all on Monday.
Please send your child with a warm coat , hat and gloves as it is getting pretty chilly out there.
Thank you for your continued support
The Year 2 Team