Topic: Wriggle and Crawl!

Here’s a taster of what we’re looking forward to in our final half term of year 2!

Grab your coat and pooter – we’re going out and about on a minibeast hunt. Sweep your nets in ponds and lift up logs to see who’s home. Then set up a minibeast laboratory and observe their every move. Add notes and labels and ask research questions, just like a real entomologist. Learn about bees and worms and butterflies too. Can you make a food chain to show who eats who? Carry out investigations to find out more, like how far a snail travels in a day and how a spider catches its prey. Then animate to show how your favourite bug transforms from one form to another, perhaps a caterpillar to a butterfly or a maggot to a fly. On your belly, legs at the ready, it’s time to wriggle and crawl.

If you would like to get started at home why not go on a mini-beast hunt in your garden or local area?  Look high and low to see what’s hiding near the ground or in the plants.  Look under logs and stones – but put everything back just how you found it, remember these places are their homes.  Draw pictures of what you find and try to find out what they are using books or the internet.  Perhaps you could think about how these creatures stay so well hidden in their habitat.  You could make a make a 3-D model of a minibeast. Collect and use natural materials, such as leaves, twigs and bark, and a range of craft materials, including googly eyes, pipe cleaners and coloured pom poms. Place your creature outside in its natural habitat and take photos with a camera or tablet.

Please bring any photos of your home learning into school after the holiday as we will be delighted to see what you got up to!  (You could email them to us to share in class if this is easier).

Reading

Please keep reading at home during the holidays.  There’s no better end to a busy day than snuggling up for stories.  We will send home a couple of extra reading books at the end of this week.

Lexia

If your child has a Lexia account (their login details will be in their reading record book) please access their account at home via this link: https://www.lexiacore5.com/?SiteID=3740-7432-0654-5562

Spellings

First week back words are:

saddest
sitting
clapped
runny
hotter

Parents: We are now be following the year 2 curriculum for spellings.  Many of these words will be in sets with common or alternative spelling patterns. Other words have more complex or unusual spelling patterns and are on the list of common exception words for year 2. We will also be looking at how suffixes are added to the end of root words and how the spelling of the root word might need to change (e.g. ‘drop the ‘e’ add the suffix).  The children are being taught strategies for learning spellings as part of their work at school.  Please encourage them to practice at home during the week and carry out an occasional test to prepare them for Friday morning.  When your children are confident spelling the words please encourage them to use them in sentences.   This will help with understanding and using the words in context.  They could also explore more words with these spelling patterns and bring them to school to share with us.  They will be tested by writing the words in dictated sentences.

Mental Maths Facts

Revise subtraction fact families for 100.
Test: complete the equations, e.g. 100 – 40 = ___,  100 – ___ = 70