Portway Infant School
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 were damp but happy as we returned to school.
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.
This week we have made artwork inspired by the story 'Wow! Said The Owl' by Tim Hopgood. We started by creating and layering our owl face using lots of different sized circles. We then drew our owl's body and decorated it using different chalk and pastel patterns. Don't they look amazing?
Today we created our very own owl press print. We had to work through a range of steps to create our artwork. 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 and 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 way to start our new topic!
This week we have made artwork inspired by the story 'The Happy Lion' by Louise Fatio. We started by drawing the face of our lion and we used pastels to for the colour. We got creative when making the manes by using a range of materials and techniques. Have a look at our wonderful creations.
Yesterday Year 2 had a visit from Mindful Minis. We had a great time learning how to be more aware of our bodies and breath and took part in a number of fun breathing exercises and yoga poses. Have a look at the pictures to see just how much fun we had!
Today we enjoyed creating our own jungle camp out of card. We had to think about how to make our camps look 3D using the different materials. We had a great time thinking about what to include in our camps and how to use the card to create different effects.
We enjoyed a special day today where we were able to dress up as characters from The Lighthouse Keeper stories. We then 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!
This morning we were set the challenge to design and build a bridge for the people of London to escape the Great Fire. We started by exploring different structures using a range of construction and thought about how this would help us plan our own bridges. We then worked as a team to create our bridge making sure it was strong, stable and secure! What a challenge it was!
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 gardens using natural materials we found in the school grounds. We hope you enjoy our beautiful gardens.
Last week the children were set the challenge of finding a joke to share with their class on Red Nose Day. There were lots of giggles coming out of our classrooms as the children shared the best jokes they had found. Each class voted for their favourite joke and 4 winners were selected. Our winner's jokes were then sent to Miss Allen and Mr Banks who voted for an overall Year 2 winner .Here are the winning jokes. Which one is your favourite?
The theme for Red Nose Day this year was 'The Great Outdoors' and what a great excuse to spend time outside enjoying the fresh air. Our activities today included creating artwork inspired by Andy Goldsworthy, becoming shape detectives and designing and making our own mini woodland. What do you think of our fantastic creations?
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, setting up zip wires and following a nature scavenger hunt. Luckily we managed to avoid the rain as well. What a fun day we had!
To mark the end of our first week back in school the children spent the morning making Great Fire of London art silhouettes. They started by creating their own fiery background using chalk pastels and getting their hands very messy. They then used black sugar paper to create a row of buildings in front. Don’t they look effective!
What a day full of treats and excitement. Today we were joined by some special visitors. Teddy and Barney the donkeys visited from St Mary Bourne and we loved going out to see them. Then later this afternoon a knock at the door revealed a very special visitor.
Andover schools were invited to take part in a Christmas tree art project. As Year 2 were learning about angels we decided to decorate our tree with beautiful tea spoon angels. The children enjoyed exploring different faces to decorate their angel with and loved designing their own angel gown.
We designed and created 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.
Today was World Diabetes Day and we loved being able to dress up as our favourite superheroes both real and fictional! We enjoyed taking part in lots of arts and crafts activities such as designing festive baubles, painting our own present gift tags and creating a penguin quiz in the build up to Christmas. We also thought about who in the community might benefit and enjoy the different items we created and why it is important to help others at this time of year.
To mark Remembrance Day we thought it would be a lovely idea to decorate a pebble with poppies. This could then be placed at a local war memorial or on the schools memorial outside reception.
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…
Year 2 enjoyed a special Roald Dahl day where we all dressed up as our favourite Roald Dahl characters including the teachers! 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!
This week we have been focussing on poetry and we have loved it! We looked at the features of different poems and thought about what kind of word choices engage us as readers. Then after watching Michael Rosen’s hilarious Chocolate Cake video we worked as a group to perform a poem and had a go at creating our own following a counting structure.
We became crocodile experts last week. We spent our week researching all about crocodiles, finding out where they lived, their diet, predators and appearance. We then thought about the different ways to share our facts through different sentence types. We thoroughly enjoyed learning about exclamation sentences and creating some of our own.
We used all of our learning to make our own crocodile fact booklet including all the key facts we’d learnt from the week. As you can see we loved sharing all of our knowledge…
Our Literacy lessons have been very exciting this week as we have been watching a short film called The Catch. 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 that they just had to turn it into a display to celebrate our fantastic work!
This week the children had to opportunity to become scientists. They planned an investigation to find out ‘What food does a snail like best?’
The children particularly enjoyed going out to collect their snails from around the school grounds.
Here are some photos from our investigation…
