Leeds Art Gallery event
Feeling inspired by our latest art themed topic, Katie and… then you might be interested in this event at Leeds Art Gallery on Saturday.
What: Celebrate The Big Draw and work with an artist to draw yourself in a surprising way.
When: Saturday 18 October 11am-4pm
Where: Leeds Art Gallery
Put on your sorting hat.
Naughty Katie destroyed all of Kandinsky’s paintings this week so we decided to help the art gallery by sorting all of the scattered pieces according to their shape.
Sometimes we had to bring our hoops together because some shapes fit under both criteria. This is called a Venn diagram.
Lots of great maths and lots of fixed pictures!
Ratios in art?
Yesterday, we combined our artistic and mathematical skills by using ratios to turn primary colours into secondary colours. We discovered that different ratios of blue to red created different purples; different ratios of red to yellow created different oranges; and different ratios of yellow to blue, of course, created different greens. Farai decided that, to make a ‘good’ orange, you needed more yellow than red.
Here we are in action…
…and our end product…
Great work, Y2.
Cooking in the new curriculum
Teachers have been busy learning about the different cooking skills we’ll be teaching your child this year!
Today we’ve made a tasty (and healthy) garden salad!
Budding actors and actresses
Friday was filled with drama and costume making as Years 1 and 2 set to work to create a performance in just one day! While half of the class worked on creating a scene, the other half were hard at work cutting, colouring and combing masks and props for the final performance. Then…we swapped.
The show took our audience through a number of paintings just like Katie (the main character of our class novels) and watched her lose a girl’s hoop, argue with monkeys, run from a tiger and dance with shapes – not to mention hiding from the gallery guard!
If you couldn’t make it, here are a few pictures from our main performance.
Sunflowers – by Year 2
We’ve got art fever in Year 2 with the start of Big Topic. We’re looking at a series of books based around a little girl called Katie. She visits the Art Gallery with her Grandma but always manages to get into mischief by journey right into the paintings!
Katie knocked over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ in this weeks story but don’t panic – we’ve created our own (that’s just as good, if not better) to replace them.
Here’s how we created this whole class piece of art…
Martha even had a go at doing her own coloured version at home.
Yoga through the rainforest
Year 2 went on a journey through the rainforest on Wednesday but nobody left their yoga mat! We had great fun doing a rain dance as we got used to the rainforest’s humid climate and then climbed trees and met many animals before sailing down the Amazon and back home. Take a look at our fantastic poses.
What a great yoga class. Well done, Year 2!
A great start
Now that we’ve all settled into Year 2, it’s time to say welcome back to everybody and well done for such a great start to the year.
Already, we’ve been exploring our use of adjectives by working together to make sentences more interesting…
A dog walked down the street.
- Add an adjective – An angry dog walked down the narrow street.
- Choose a more interesting verb – A dog scurried down the street.
- Use a conjunction to add information – A dog walked down the street so he could get back home.
- Use an adverb – A dog walked hurriedly down the street.
- Of course, you could use all of these to really improve your writing.
An angry dog scurried hurriedly down the narrow street so he could get back home.
We’ve also got lots of facts to remember for our Where in the world? topic. Here are some things we need to know. Maybe you could test us at home…
- Seven continents – Africa, Europe, South America, North America, Australasia, Antarctica and Asia.
- Five oceans – Arctic, Indian, Atlantic, Southern, Pacific
- United Kingdom – England (London), Scotland (Edinburgh), Wales (Cardiff) and Northern Ireland (Belfast).
Keep up the hard work, Year 2.
Smile for miles on the St Gemma’s sponsored walk
One of our chosen school charities, St Gemma’s Hospice, is holding their first ever Happy Walk on Saturday 20 September. This is a good opportunity to support our school charity but also to take part in a great morning with your family while walking 3.5 or 5.5 miles around Roundhay Park. The event starts at 10am.
We’ll be co-ordinating registration for the event and registration forms are available now from the office.
Entrance for this event is £5 (children under 12 walk free) and each walker will get a free hot drink and cake. All participants are asked to raise sponsorship money. It is also a pram and wheelchair friendly route so the whole family really can get involved.
There will be an activity pack that children can take with them on the walk where they can look out for wildlife and take some tree rubbings. Before the walk starts there will also be a face painter, a chance to meet Olaf from Frozen, and time to make your own Happy Loom band to wear and keep.
St Gemma’s are also encouraging all walkers to wear what makes them Happy on the walk – whether that’s a silly hat, fluffy socks or a brightly coloured t-shirt.
We hope you are able to join in with the St Gemma’s Happy Walk.
New SEAL theme
As we start the new school year, our SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme focuses on new beginnings.
‘I make someone feel welcome’ is the first SEAL statement to launch the theme.
New Beginnings allows children the opportunity to discuss and reflect on how they or others may feel in a new situation or setting. This SEAL theme offers children the opportunity to see themselves as valued individuals within a community, and to contribute to shaping a welcoming, safe and fair learning community for all.
During the theme, the key areas of learning are empathy, self-awareness, social skills and motivation.
Through discrete SEAL lessons, circle times and across the curriculum, children will explore feelings of happiness and excitement, sadness, anxiety and fearfulness, while learning (and putting into practice) shared models for calming down and problem-solving.
New Beginnings supports the development of a learning community in each classroom where all members feel that they belong. Class contracts, produced at the start of the year, allow children to contribute to how they feel they can achieve a safe and fair learning community.
