Portway Infant School
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. 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!
Today the children took part in National Schools Cricket Day. It was an event organised by the English and Welsh Cricket Board to mark 50 days until the start of the 2026 Women’s World Cup. The children had opportunity to practise a variety of different cricket skills including batting, bowling and catching. They were excited to learn that the next world cup will be taking place in England and can’t wait to cheer on their favourite countries.
For more information on the upcoming Women’s T20 World Cup check out the link below.
The children really enjoyed creating their own lighthouse landscape. They carefully recreated the famous basket scene from The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch making sure to include both the lighthouse and little white cottage. The children then added colour by using wax crayons, making sure they carefully coloured in all of the white parts. They then used a blue colour wash to fill in the background. They were amazed to watch the colour wash slide off of their wax colouring.
Today we had an exciting visit from The Drama Hut where the very talented actor, Matthew, 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!
We have had a great day dressing up as some of our favourite book characters for World Book Day...... come and see!
Year 2 have had so much fun learning all about birds during Farm to Fork week. We looked carefully at the different habitats at school, learnt about food chains and what would happen if part of the food chain went missing. To make sure that birds won't disappear from our food chains at school, we decided to make eco-friendly bird feeders to give them a helping hand. After creating our wonderful bird feeders, we took a trip to forest school to hang them up. We can't wait to spot the different birds enjoying their new tasty treats!
This week we had a special visit from author, poet and story teller Chitra Soundar. She told us all about her childhood in India and how it inspired her to become a story teller. Chitra then came into each of the year 2 classes to run a story telling workshop. She talked through how she creates her stories starting with the main character. Chitra then worked each class to create their own story. She really embraced the idea of “if you can imagine it you can tell a story about it” philosophy of storytelling.
Today we ventured out for a fantastic day using our amazing school grounds. We enjoyed using our measuring skills alongside our newly learned weaving skills to create a wolf's eye ( God's Eye). We perfected our map reading skills as we went orienteering. We were all especially excited to go on a hidden trail through the woodland to find clues from different traditional tales, some of them were very well hidden
Year 2 were extremely lucky this 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 horse. 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
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.
Have a look at our fantastic work!
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 apiece of paper into a conductor's baton by setting it on fire – wow! It was wonderful to see so many new instruments as well as some we already knew. We listened carefully to each piece of music and tried really hard to guess which film the Disney music came from. Sometimes we even pretended to conduct the orchestra ourselves! What a fantastic morning we had!
We looked carefully at the illustrations of Marjolaine Leray in the story ‘The Grande Grrr’. We noticed her scruffy style of sketching which cleverly showed the character’s emotions and her use of colour. We then tried this style of sketching and experimented with different bold colours to see the effect.
This week we have been learning about the role of angels in the Christmas Story. We then created our own spoon angels! Look below at how beautiful they are!
Year 2 took part in a New Age Festival at Harrow Way Community School. The children have been learning about Kurling in PE and enjoyed the opportunity to showcase their skills against other local schools. The children represented the school with pride and were able to demonstrate all of the hard work they have been putting in during PE.
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!
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 designed our penguin bottle models and finally we created 3D penguin enclosures using paper or construction kits. It was a busy day (especially looking after our babies!) but a lot of fun.
In honour of Remembrance Day, the children listened to the story of Where the poppies now grow and discussed why the poppy is the symbol of remembrance. The children looked at a range of different watercolour artists and looked at their poppy art. The children then experimented with the different techniques to create their own stunning artwork.
Our author focus this 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 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 Vik from 'Chance to Shine Cricket' for making the sessions so much fun!
