Year 2 & 3 - Ash

We are Ash Class

Welcome to our class page. The adults working in Ash Class this year will be Miss Gallimore - teacher; Mrs Prescott - HLTA: Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; Mrs Mudd - Teaching Assistant:  Monday and Wednesday.

Science

Our topic this term is 'Be a Scientist', we will be carrying out some investigations learning how to do this fairly.

To start our topic today we made butter in a jar, ice-cream in a bag and quicksand gloop. It was lots of fun seeing items change into something different and we even got to try a little bit of the ice-cream and butter!

Maths

In maths we have been looking at symmetry. We had to work with partners to try and draw a symmetrical butterfly listening to each others instructions.

L.S. Lowry

We started looking at the artist L.S. Lowry. We looked at the history of Lowry and the colours he used in his pictures. We found out he only ever used the colours, red, blue, yellow, white and black. If he wanted a different colour he had to mix it himself, we had a try mixing the colours and found it quite tricky to get the exact colour we wanted.

Topic

This term our topic is Art Attack. The classroom turned into an art gallery. We looked carefully at the paintings to see if we could identify pictures that belonged to the same artist.

English

To help us with our stories we have been writing adjectives to describe our feelings. Some of us even used thesauruses to help us find some more interesting words.

Trip to the Post Office

Last week we wrote letters to a toy company; either Hasbro, Lego or Spin Master. We asked them how they made toys, how they came up with their ideas and lots of other questions. We had a quick walk to the post office this afternoon to buy some stamps and then post our letters!

Golden Time

This week for golden time the children voted for a movie. We chose Toy Story 3 to link in with our topic.

Toys

We have been able to look at some old toys from the Somerset Heritage Trust. We started to compare them to the toys we have now. We noticed that some are now made from different materials and we saw some toys we had never seen before including a 'Jacobs ladder' and a 'trapeze clown'.

Maths

The year 2s have been doing division this week. They've been using cubes to look at the difference between division by sharing and division by grouping.

Year 3s have been looking at how to multiply a 2-digit number by a 1-digit number. We started by using diennes and making the number for example 23 X 4, they would make 23 four times. They then moved onto drawing it pictorially before using the formal written column method.

Hand puppets

We have designed our own hand puppets. We had to carefully cut out the felt before learning to sew it together! It was quite hard to get the thread through the needle and to stop it unthreading when we were sewing but after several attempts we got there!

Stick Puppets

We had a mysterious set of instructions given to us this afternoon, the instructions had no title or picture so we had no idea what we were making! We carefully followed each instruction and at the end we had made superhero stick puppets! We then used our puppets to put on a puppet show.

Creature Comforts

We have had a brilliant time this morning with all the animals! We got to see lots of different animals including; stick insects; a tarantula, tree frogs, praying mantis, ghekos and snakes. We learnt lots of amazing facts about the animals and had a great time watching them move around the carpet and even pooing on the floor! We got to stroke some of the animals and even hold them.

A big thank you to Kim from Really Wild Learning for travelling to Nether Stowey with all the animals.

Have a great half term everyone!

Golden time 

This week we have been playing board games!

Tree art

In art this afternoon we looked at the trees and different perspectives. We started at the edge of the playground and drew what we could see when we looked through a photo frame. We then worked our way closer and closer until we were right next to it!

Tree week

This week is going to be all about trees. We had a mysterious tree arrive in the school hall after break which was very exciting! Mrs Holt then tasked us with writing a description about what we can see.

Golden Time

This weeks golden time activity linked in with our topic  'Creature Comforts'. We were able to practise our cutting skills to cut different shapes out to build a penguin. We then thought about where penguins live for the background design.

Art - Silhouettes

We used watercolours to create a sunset background before cutting out silhouettes in black paper to stick on. Can you guess what animals they have cut out?

Here is a selection of their work

Golden Time

For golden time this week we went to forest school, Miss Gallimore had some alpaca fur we put into bird feeders so birds can take it for their nests. We also used the bug boxes again to inspect the mini-beasts we found and used our knowledge we have learnt about habitats to build our own.

Music

On a Friday afternoon we have music. This week we have been practising our singing.

Ash Class Shop

We opened a shop today so we could buy some stationary. We had to buy at least two things at a time, work out the total and find the correct money before being able to pay the shop keeper.

Patterns

We have been using animals in our art work, we have been looking closely to see the different patterns and colours before trying to recreate them ourselves.

Money

We have been learning how to count money this week and looking at how to select coins and notes to make certain amounts. We discovered there is more than one way to make the same amount so have been trying to find the quickest way.

Creature Comforts!

We headed down to forest school today to see what wildlife we could find and to discover the homes they chose to live in. We were very careful looking at the animals and made sure to put them back exactly where we found them! We then went back to class and wrote some sentences using adjectives to describe the animals.

Poetry Performances

Thank you to everyone that came and watched us perform our poems. Everyone performed fantastically!

Gingerbread stories

Last week we wrote stories with a gingerbread character. This week we have been learning how to edit our work to ensure we have all our full stops, capital letters and our sight words spelt correctly! We use 'spelling specs' and 'grammar goggles' to help us find them.

Carnival Masks

We have been asked to decorate a carnival mask for this year's carnival. The theme is space. Key stage one and reception class spent their time carefully decorating one mask for the carnival and  Key stage two decorated the other mask! Keep your eyes open and look out for our mask around Bridgwater shops and at the carnival.  I'm sure you agree the mask looks out of this world!!

Parent Workshops

Thank you to everyone that came. If you have any questions please do not hesitate in asking either myself, Mrs Bowditch or Mr Luke.

School Councillors

We have two school councillors in Ash Class. They are Phoebe and Elijah.