Portway Infant School
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.
Story Sticks
This 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 is 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?
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!
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
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!
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 lovely autumnal sun for a brilliant day of Forest School. We enjoyed building some amazing dens, concocting a muddy menu in the mud kitchen, creating natural pictures and following a nature scavenger hunt. We particularly enjoyed snail hunting and have made some new slimy friends. What a fantastic day we have 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?
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!
Today we created our very own owl press print. 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 way to start our new topic!
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.
This term we are learning 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?
