Portway Infant School
Today we were lucky enough to be joined by some Portway parents and grandparents for our Christmas assembly in the hall. The grown ups impressed us with their musical talent and we could name many different instruments. What a lovely way to come together and sing some well known Christmas carols. Thank you to our wonderful performers for joining us.
Penguin Bottles
We had such a great time designing and creating our own type of penguin. We carefully planned which penguin we wanted to make. We used paper and paste carefully to mould our penguin shape and then chose suitable materials to match our plan and decorate. We are very proud of the results. Have a look at our wonderful photos!
This term we have been learning how to play the recorder with Miss Thompson from Hampshire Music Service. This week we were excited to perform in a concert with a full audience! We hope everyone enjoyed the music as much as we did! A huge thank you to Miss Thompson who has shown such hard work and dedication throughout every Music lesson.
Today was Penguin Day and what a great day we had! We were each given an egg to look after for the entire day. We created our brood pouches using a range of materials to help keep our egg safe, warm and dry. It was so lovely reading some of our favourite books to them during the school day. We then practised our penguin sketching by creating a mood board thinking carefully about the colours that matched our penguin. We finished the day by learning the first part of a 'Penguin Dance' which was made all the more exciting because we were dressed as penguins!
On Monday the children in Year 2 were treated to some expert dancing tuition. Anne-Marie from West End Dance presented a dancing workshop based on the story of Rama and Sita. The children were able to show off their knowledge about Diwali, the festival of light. Have a look at our photos to see the wonderful fun we had and some of the great dance moves Anne-Marie taught us.
Year 2 enjoyed a special Roald Dahl day where we all dressed up as our favourite Roald Dahl characters including the teachers! Following our designs, we selected materials to decorate our Roald Dahl character puppets. We took part in an Enormous Crocodile drama workshop then finished our day with some crocodile art using watercolours. What a fantastic day we had!
Our Literacy lessons have been very exciting this week as we have been watching a short film called Sweet Cocoon. We closely studied the clip and discovered it had no words just music playing through it. We spent the week carefully thinking about the characters and events that took place throughout the clip. We absolutely loved writing the story using exciting word choices and story language.
The teachers were so impressed with the children’s enthusiasm and amazing stories! Well done to all of Year 2!
This term have started learning the recorder with the wonderful Miss Thompson from Hampshire Music Service. We have learnt to hold our instruments and play the note B. We have loved learning lots of new songs to sing alongside playing our recorders or clapping to different beats. We are excited for our term ahead!
Year 2 ventured out into the fresh air for a brilliant day of Forest School. We enjoyed building some amazing dens, concocting a muddy menu in the mud kitchen, creating the perfect habitat for our school snails and creating some natural art based on the style of Andy Goldsworthy. Luckily the sun shone for us all day as well. What a fun day we had!
This week we started learning all about snails. We had a lot of fun exploring the school grounds trying to find all of the different places a snail might like to call home. We are now taking care of them in our classrooms. It’s a lot of fun getting them out, watching them and holding them.
This term we have been learning how to play Bamboo Tamboo with Mrs Dixon from Hampshire Music Service and we have been recreating the sounds of the Caribbean using our percussion instruments. This week we were excited to perform in a concert with a full audience! A huge thank you to Mrs Dixon who has shown such hard work and dedication for the last few years at Portway. We will miss her lots!
What a fabulous day we had at The Hawk Conservancy! After a short journey we started our day with sketching and discovering as much as possible about the birds. We followed this with the Wings of Africa display. We had to duck quite a lot! The Secretary Bird made us laugh as it karate kicked a rubber snake. After lunch we had more time to explore before ending our day with the Valley of the Eagles display. The vultures flew so low they almost hit our heads. We had such a wonderful day and were very lucky with the weather!
This week we have made artwork inspired by the story ‘Wow! Said The Owl’ by Tim Hopgood. We started by creating and layering our owls face using lots of different sized circles. We then drew our owl’s bodies and decorated using different chalk and pastel patterns. Don’t they look amazing?
Today was lots of fun! We dissected owl pellets carefully using tweezers and cocktail sticks so we could find out what the owl had been eating. We were really excited to find lots of different bones and then try and match our bones with the examples to find out what each bone was.
What fantastic weather we had for our school sports day this year! It was great to see all of the parents and grown ups there to cheer on the children and the children were so excited to see you all too! We started our morning with the obstacle course which involved wearing a penguin inflatable trying to avoid the orcas! Next it was an old favourite; the sack race followed by the egg and spoon race. Finally the excitement rose once again for the water relay and the sprint race. Needless to say everyone had a great time in the sunshine and we would like to say thank you again for helping us to make this such an amazing morning!
This week we created our owl press prints. We had to work through a range of steps to create our art work. First we designed our owl on a whiteboard making sure it was a good size. Then we carefully copied it onto our polystyrene tile using a whiteboard pen. The tricky bit was tracing our design using a pencil making sure we didn't push too hard. Once our tile was ready we covered it with ink and pressed it onto the paper. What a great start to our new topic.
After we were sadly unable to visit the new adventure golf at Charlton Lakes this week, Miss Allen provided us with an even better surprise! We had such a super afternoon racing in our own Eagle Grand Prix and enjoying the sunshine in a variety of different activities! Here are some photos of all the fun we had!
What a great week we have had! We have been learning all about Queen Elizabeth and her incredible life. We took part in our very own Portway Highland Games where we competed in a tug of war, wellie wanging and shotput. Everyone really enjoyed baking biscuits and we decorated them with red, white and blue icing. At the end of our fun week, we embellished crowns ready to wear at our Portway Street Party where we ate lots of delicious food and danced with our friends. Have a look at the photos below to see how much fun we had!
Today we created our very own lighthouse with a winding mechanism to save Mr Grinling from carrying everything up the winding staircase. We are very proud of our creations! We followed our designs carefully, making sure we were as accurate as possible especially when it came to measuring our stripes. If there was a problem we persevered and adapted our designs. We hope you enjoy looking at them as much as we enjoyed making them.
We enjoyed a special day today where we were able to dress up as characters from the Lighthouse Keeper stories. Our challenges were based around The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch and The Lighthouse Keeper’s Picnic. To help Mr Grinling become healthier we made a lovely healthy wrap and designed a menu full of delicious food that wasn’t too full of sugar or fats. As the seagulls like stealing his lunch we constructed a seagull proof basket to carry his lunch in. Finally we set up a pulley system in the Forest School area to carry the basket from the little white cottage to the lighthouse. We had a great time!
We were incredibly lucky to have one of our favourite author and illustrators Petr Horacek visit Portway this week. He wowed us all with his fantastic stories and even taught us how to draw some of his more famous characters. Have a peek below to see your own budding illustrators at work! Enjoy!
This term we are learning how to play bamboo tamboo with Mrs Dixon from Hampshire Music Service. We have been recreating the sounds of the Caribbean using our percussion instruments.
We can’t wait to continue practising ready to perform next half term.
This week the children listened to and retold the Easter story. We discussed the importance of the Easter story to Christians. To help us remember the story we created our very own Easter garden using natural materials we found in the school grounds and we made resurrection rolls. We also had time for some lovely Easter art activities and who can resist an Easter Egg Hunt?
Today we had an exciting visit from The Drama Hut where the very talented actor, Laura, took us on a journey to explore the events of the Great Fire of London. We met Thomas Farriner who described what happened the night the fire started and we also met Samuel Pepys who read his diary to us. We also loved showing off our knowledge from this term's learning. What a fantastic time we had! Have a look at our photos below!
This term we have had a great time learning to play a range of samba instruments with Miss Dixon from Hampshire Music Service. We have learnt to follow a steady beat on the Surdo’s and Silver drums. We have also enjoyed listening to the sounds of the Tamborin, Agogo bell and Ganza. We can’t wait to show everyone what we have been practising next week!
Yesterday we ventured out in the wind for a brilliant day of Forest School. We enjoyed identifying trees and leaves in the forest using our ID sheets. We were set different measuring challenges such as building a 15cm chair for Goldilocks using natural resources we found outside! We were all especially excited to go on a hidden trail through the woodland to find clues from different traditional tales.
We loved starting our week with a special Willow Pattern Day. We created our own plate based in the style of the Willow Pattern. We followed in the steps of Koong Shee and Chang to create origami paper boats to pass messages across the river. Then after lunch we designed our own Pagoda and painted them using different tones of blue and white for effect.
Have a look at our fantastic work!
Year 2 were extremely lucky last week as we got to take part in a Chinese New Year workshop. We were introduced to the 12 different animals of the Chinese calendar and were excited to find out that this year we are celebrating the year of the Tiger. The fun didn’t stop there though as we got to perform a traditional Chinese dance and even form our own class dragon! The Chinese believe that the longer the dragon, the more luck you will get.
Over the past couple of weeks, we have been learning to play New Age Curling. We started by learning the correct throwing (pushing) position and have experimented with how the amount of power we put into each throw affects the distance it travels. We then developed a variety of different shots and have learnt how to use them tactically within a game.
Last week we listened to the story and music of Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev. We loved learning about the different characters and their personalities. Part of our learning was to retell the story and this is why we created our story sticks. We used different fabrics and wools to represent the characters and places in the story. If you look closely at our sticks can you see the different characters and events that happen in the story?
We designed and created our own penguin sculpture using paper and paste to layer over our bottles. First we chose which type of penguin we wanted to make and drew a design. Then we used suitable materials to follow our design and decorate to make as close a match to our plan as possible. We are very proud of the results.
Here are a few photos from our Year 2 Ukulele Concert last week. Thank you to all the grown-ups for coming to watch. We hope you enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed performing to you all!
This term we have been busy learning how to play the ukulele with the wonderful Miss Dixon from Hampshire Music Service. We have learnt to pluck and strum our ukulele and we can name the different parts of it too. We have loved learning lots of new songs to sing alongside playing our ukuleles or clapping to different beats. We can’t wait to perform to our grown ups next week!
Our author focus last half term was all about the amazing work of Roald Dahl. We loved listening to his stories so much that we were thrilled to be able to create our own puppet based on our favourite characters. We carefully planned our puppet before having a go at sewing our puppet together. Take a look at some of our wonderful creations…
This afternoon we were treated to some expert dancing tuition. As part of the celebration of Diwali, the festival of light, the company West End in Schools presented a workshop based on the story of Rama and Sita. Take a look at the smiles on our faces in the photos! We had so much fun!
Today was Penguin Day and what a great day we had! We were each given an egg to look after for the entire day. We created our brood pouches using a range of materials to help keep our egg safe, warm and dry. It was so lovely reading some of our favourite books to our eggs during the school day. We then practised our penguin sketching by creating a moodboard thinking carefully about the colours that matched our penguin. We finished the day by learning the first part of a ‘Penguin Dance’ which was made all the more exciting because we were actually dressed up as penguins!
Year 2 enjoyed a special Roald Dahl day where we all dressed up as our favourite Roald Dahl characters including the teachers! We decorated Crocodile biscuits which we created exciting ingredients for. We took part in an Enormous Crocodile drama workshop, created a Wanted poster to catch that dastardly Enormous Crocodile and then finished our day with some crocodile sketching. What a fantastic day we have had!
Today in PE we have been practising the 5 basic gymnastics shapes. These are: straight, star, tuck, pike and straddle. We then chose 2 of these shapes to create our own sequences thinking carefully about how we could 'travel' across the mat.
This half term we have been enjoying learning and putting into practice some cricket skills. This week we got into small groups and practised our bowling and batting. Lots of fun was had by all and we would like to say a big thank you to James from 'Chance to Shine Cricket' for making the sessions so much fun!
Year 2 ventured out into the fresh air for a brilliant day of Forest School. We enjoyed building some amazing dens, concocting a muddy menu in the mud kitchen, creating the perfect habitat for our school snails and recreating some nature art based on the style of Andy Goldsworthy. Luckily the sun shone for us all day as well. What a fun day we had!
What a great day we had celebrating our first week back at school. We had lots of fun making our own juggling balls using balloons and rice. We then put our circus skills to the test in the afternoon by practising our balancing, throwing and catching and even some tricks with the hula hoops.
