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 Masters of Flight display. The kite flew so low it almost hit our heads. We had such a wonderful day and were very lucky with the weather!
This week the children took part in Portway Olympic Week. The children learnt about the origins of the Olympic Games and how they have changed over the years. Each day the children took part in a different Olympic sport. Throughout the week the children learnt about national identify and how a countries flag represents their culture and history. The children then designed their own flag to represent their own class. On Friday, the children took part in their own Olympic opening ceremony where they had the opportunity to showcase their class Flag. What a fantastic week it has been!
We were so excited to welcome Andy Seed to our school yesterday. He engaged everyone with poetry workshops and helped us to write our own poems. Andy even taught us about how a book is made from start to finish (it's very clever!). What a great day we all had, take a look at our photos.
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!
This term have started learning the recorder with the wonderful Mrs Moore 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!
This term we have been learning how to play the ukulele with Mrs Moore from Hampshire Music Service and we have been working hard to improve our plucking and strumming. Today we were so excited to perform in a concert with a full audience! A huge thank you to our wonderful music teacher, Mrs Moore, and to our grown ups for supporting us this afternoon.
Today we had an exciting visit from The Drama Hut where the very talented actor, Kat, 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 week has been a very sporty one for Year 2! First some of the children had the opportunity to represent Portway at a local schools hockey festival. After practicing their hockey skills in a series of challenging drills, the children then took part in mini competition winning both of their games thanks to goals from Cici (3) and Roshil.
On Wednesday the children had a visit from Mighty Netball. The Mighty Netball coaches put on a fantastic coaching session for all the children introducing them to a series of Netball skills. The children had great fun and may have found their new favourite sport.
Today we were treated to a fantastic performance from a ukulele band! Everyone enjoyed clapping and singing along to popular songs and we were even taught some new songs too. Some children from Year 2 played a piece of music from their weekly ukulele lessons. A huge thank you to the wonderful musicians who came to visit and share their talents with us.
On Thursday we dressed up as our favourite story characters for World Book Day! Our day began with sharing our amazing costumes and talking about our characters. We read a story called ‘Where has all the cake gone?” We then discussed if Albert was telling truth and explored his very imaginative story. We then had the opportunity to create our own story about the missing cake.
Can you guess who we are in the photos? If you dressed up then who would you like to be?
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 dragon. 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.
Today we ventured out in the wet for a fantastic day using our amazing school grounds. We enjoyed using our measuring skills alongside our newly learned skills of cutting and hammering as we created a stool to replace the one broken by Goldilocks. We had to make a shelter that would keep the rain off us, a perfect activity for today! We were all especially excited to go on a hidden trail through the woodland to find clues from different traditional tales before creating clay faces to match one of the characters.
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 designed our own Pagoda and painted them using different tones of blue and white for effect. Then after lunch we followed in the steps of Koong Shee and Chang to create origami paper boats to pass messages across the river.
Have a look at our fantastic work!
Year 2 enjoyed a road safety workshop this afternoon where they were able to learn about how to keep safe when near or crossing a road. The children identified safe places to cross when out and about and thought about what to do when there is no specific place to cross.
They all enjoyed singing a song about road safety too!
Remember......stop, look, listen, think!
Year 2 had a great time at the Children’s Concert in Southampton. After a fun coach journey, we found our seats in the Central Hall and we were very excited for what was to come! We especially liked the magician on stage who turned a piece of paper into the conductor's baton – wow! It was wonderful to see so many new instruments as well as some we already knew and we listened carefully to each piece of music. Sometimes we even pretended to conduct the orchestra ourselves! What a fantastic morning we had!
