What do plants need to stay healthy? We have been carefully observing four different basil plants over the last few weeks and recording how healthy they are each week in our science journals. Can you work out which plants have had no water, no light, or no warmth?

Thank you again for all your efforts for the Year 2 Village Show. It was an absolute triumph and the children should be incredibly proud of themselves. 

Are all seeds the same? In science this week, we learned that nearly all plants come from seeds and that they can vary enormously in size, colour, pattern and shape. We observed seeds closely and discussed how they were similar and different to each other. 

Another busy week of learning in Meadow 2! We have continued looking at life cycles in science and the children loved looking at all the photographs of them as babies. It's amazing how much some of them have changed.... and some hardly at all!

Thank you to all the parents who helped out with our welly walk to the Poundbury Transition Town farm. The children were brilliant at spotting all the different things growing that were 'bee-friendly' and all the changes since we went in January. 

Here's a song  about the frog lifecycle we we've been singing very loudly all week!

We've packed a lot into our first three days back! We've started learning all about animal life cycles in science and the wonderful book 'Tadpole's Promise' in literacy. We went to the pond and found lots of tadpoles, froglets and even a fully grown frog!

In art, we started looking at 'form' and created someamazing paper sculptures. 

The children have been so creative making their fire engines in DT this week. We've learned all about wheels and axles and discovered that sellotape was much better than masking tape at sticking!

What a brilliant visit we had to the fire station this week. Thank you to all the parents who helped out. The children were truly inspired and came back to the classroom eager to design and create their fire engine models. 

What questions do we have about the Great Fire of London? We started our new history topic by looking at different artefacts, including a bakery poster, a burned piece of wood and a piece of cheese wrapped up in cloth! Then in groups, we wrote questions about each one and hope to answer them as our topic progresses during the term. 

We enjoyed a brilliant science workshop led by volunteers from the Dorset Wildlife Trust this week, linking with all our learning about the polar regions and living things and their habitats. We melted ice using salt, created ice from water and explored lots of artefacts. 

As part of our learning about the polar regions, we are looking at the amazing beauty and geometry of snowflakes in art. This week, we learned that snowflakes are all hexagon shaped and drew hexagons using a compass and ruler. The children did brilliantly and were so careful and precise in their drawing. 

What living and non-living things can we find in a hunt around the school grounds? We started our new science topic on living things and their habitats. It was lovely to go and say hello to the chickens!

Which animals have been creeping through our school? We discovered some footrints this week and identified the different animals that had  made them. But there was an extra set that belonged to a mysterious animal so we wrote some 'wanted' posters asking for people to help us identify this creature. It turned out to have been made by a dodo!

Wow, what a brilliant production of Scrooge the children did this week. We are so proud of how well they performed, overcoming nerves to say their lines, sing their songs and dance with true Damers confidence. 

We enjoyed our Victorian Christmas day, although the children are glad that Mrs Hollingworth isn't a Victorian teacher all the time!

What a fun time we had at the Museum of East Dorset. We experienced a very strict Victorian school, had a go at washing using traditional Victorian methods, made our own peg dolls and visited the ironmongers shop. 

This week we made our own Victorian thaumatrope and then we wrote instructions to help others make a thaumatrope. Why don't you have a go at making one at home?

We have been busy rehearsing all our songs, lines and dancing for the Year 2 production of Scrooge. Please practise lines at home! There is a family-friendly performance of A Christmas Carol at the Corn Exchange in Dorchester on Sunday 8th December in the afternoon. Please click here if you're interested. 

In maths we have just begun learning about multiplication. Keep practising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s as this will really help as we start to learn our times tables next week.  

This week we have been very busy exploring bridges. We enjoyed a workshop about Tower Bridge and explored which type of bridge could hold the greatest weight. We enjoyed building bridges out of magnetic tiles and learned all about the Victorian Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed bridges and tunnels. We also started looking at Monet's Waterlily paintings, with its famous arched bridge, and began to practice painting like the Impressionists.

This week we have loved starting our new topic of ‘Who can be an inventor?’ by creating some amazing inventions out of junk modelling materials. We have also started our history topic - our Big Question this term is ‘Who can be an inventor?’. We also enjoyed finding out about famous inventors, you can watch the video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEpTX_EujRs

In maths, we recapped how to subtract. We have also been thinking about, if we know the answer to 5 - 1 = 4, how this can help us with knowing 50 - 10 = 40. We will be continuing with this next week

Every Friday in geometry this term, we've been looking at examples of the 'golden ratio' in nature and art. Here are some of the fantastic drawings we did based on Van Gough's 'Starry Night' this week. 

We enjoyed learning about transparent, translucent and opaque materials and thought about why these properties were useful for different purposes. We also went for a walk around the school and found different things with these properties.

We had so much fun sorting different crops into those that have been grown in the UK and those that have been grown in Kenya. We discussed the way the climate in Kenya was brilliant for growing crops like tea and coffee and how green beans grew in the UK, but only during our summer season. The children were brilliant at trying different the different food, everyone gave it a good go, even if they didn't always like it! And some got a very pleasant surprise and ate seconds of our sweet potato!

We were very glad to have a look at all these wonderful items from Kenya, which were brought in by the grandparents of one of Meadow 2 class members. We loved looking at the Massai necklace and blanket and seeing all the amazing photographs of the animals they saw on their trip. 

This week we have been exploring the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. We've thought of adjectives to describe the main character. We've also started our topic on Kenya and learned how to locate it on a world map. 

The children have worked so hard on these paintings, don't they look fantastic?!