Reading - read daily and record on Boom Reader 

Spelling - Review and Consolidation week 

The children ended the week on a high as they all participated in our annual Sports Day - we are so proud of each and every one of them for their teamwork, sportsmanship and hard work throughout the day.

Other highlights include Maths, where the children recapped learning to tell the time to the hour and consolidated their understanding of column addition where regrouping was required! 

In English, the children did lots of role-play, gossiping the antics of Egg Box Dragon as well as thinking about what the other characters in the story thought of Egg Box Dragon!

Please enjoy a lovely restful weekend in the sunshine.

Best wishes,
Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Reading:
Please read daily with your adult and log it on Boom Reader.
You can read your 'Snow White and the Jazz Band' book, your banded book or a book from home. 
Snow White and the Jazz Band will be swapped on Monday so please ensure that it is in your child's book bag.

Maths:
Please practice Doodle Maths 45 minutes weekly - this can be in smaller chunks over a few days!
You can also practise your 2, 5 and 10x tables on Topmarks - Hit the Button Game 
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

We have had a full on week this week, especially with the heat!
The children enjoyed English this week where they used their imaginative ideas to plan and write the next part of the story where Egg Box Dragon is placed under the moonlight - we loved marking them and were very impressed with their writing.

In Maths we have been looking at position and direction using a range of mathematical vocabulary to describe the position of objects, and using directional language to guide our friends and teachers to different places on a map. We ended the week with a tangram challenge, the children loved creating pictures using seven different shapes, including a turtle, a lion, an elephant and a giraffe!

In Science this week we investigated the best materials to build our own greenhouse. The children designed their greenhouses and labelled the materials they want to use and we look forward to seeing their final greenhouses next week.

A highlight of the week was DT where we tasted a range of biscuits, described them and rated them. We will be making our own biscuits in a couple of weeks time.

On Friday we enjoyed exploring the local community on a village walk. We looked for buildings from different periods of time, tallied the number of each type of building, and then stopped at the end of Buckden High Street to explore the range of places of employment we have available in Buckden, and we then talked about what job opportunities that these places of employment provide.

We have continued to practice a range of PE skills ready for Sports Day next Friday - we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible!

Have a lovely, sunny weekend.
Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

This week we have enjoyed reading our Power of Reading text 'Egg Box Dragon'.
The children loved visualising what they thought Egg Box Dragon looked like using evidence from the story and then we had a fabulous morning creating our own Egg Box Dragons out of junk modelling and craft materials!
We will be continuing this next week by writing the next part of the story where Egg Box Dragon sleeps under the moonlight... Will something magical happen?!

In Maths the children have started to look at the language associated with position and direction, looking at where objects are positioned using a range of vocabulary including left and right, and we will continue this next week.

In History we have begun looking at different buildings though History, such as Tudor, Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian buildings, looking at and drawing their features and we even spotted that we have some of these buildings around the village!

Next Friday we will be going on a walk around Buckden to spot some of these buildings, as well as to find a range of places of employment, when we consider how important the High Street is to our community. If you are free between 9 and 10:30am and would be able to join us for our walk, please send an email to your child's class teacher - limited spaces are available for walking and will be on a first come, first serve basis - thank you.

We have begun learning about Judaism and thinking about why the Torah brings so much joy to the Jewish community, and we learned about Simchat Torah, a festival where Jewish people celebrate finishing the reading of their Holy Book before they go back to the beginning to relearn all that the Torah has to teach, and how to be their best selves.

As the weather continues to improve, please ensure that you have put suncream on the children before they come to school, and make sure that they have packed hats and a water bottle - it's looking warm next week!

Have a wonderful sunny weekend.

Best wishes,

Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team 

Reading - read and record on Boom Reader 

Maths - Doodle maths (some assignments have been added this week for them to have a go at) 

This half term has flown by!
A fantastic trip to Woburn last week was enjoyed by all - we loved seeing all of the animals, including rhinos, elephants, tigers, lions and bears on the road safari, as well as a range of land and sea creatures including meerkats, sealions, penguins, red pandas and lots of others on the foot safari! The children were so well behaved and represented our school so well - we are incredibly proud of them.

This week we have enjoyed our 'Vision and Values day' on Tuesday, where we looked at our school vision quote "in faith we act, for nothing is impossible with God". We linked this with all of the Sustainable development goals we have covered this year and made posters to show how we can be our best selves to try and make the world a better place for all.

Wednesday-Friday we have absolutely loved celebrating Buckden School's Science Week!
On Wednesday we participated in Buckden School's Big Science Quiz - the children could answer all of the questions and give reasons for their answers, all children earned house points for their teams with super engagement and lots of scientific conversation!

We also looked in depth at what Botanists do as part of their jobs - we then became botanists and studied a range of flowers in real detail, producing some beautiful botanical illustrations with scientific labels and vocabulary. We looked at the Botanist Agnes Arber, researched her job role and learned lots of facts about her, including that she was one of the first female Botanists to become a member of several scientific societies, as well as earned various medals for her work and achievements!

On Thursday we completed a carousel of activities around school, visiting year 4 to learn about paper aeroplanes and year 6 to conduct a bottle flip experiment! We had great fun and it was exciting to meet and learn with other teachers around school!

On Friday we took part in the great poetry share, where we looked in detail at a range of flowers and used adjectives to describe them, before exploring rhythm and rhyme. We used all the skills we leaned to then create some wonderful poems all about flowers. The children loved writing them up in neat and we have created a class poetry anthology of flower poems to add to our classroom library!

If you are available to walk to/from the Church on Monday 2nd June between 9am and 10:30am, please let us know via our individual/year group emails.

Have a wonderful half term - please rest and relax before we come back and get ourselves ready for the challenge of Year 3! We will be focusing on developing our listening skills further, developing stamina in our writing and really refining our handwriting!

Best wishes,
Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Please continue to practise the rules we have been learning over the last few weeks, including:
The 'j' sound using the letters g, ge and dge - germ, age, bridge
The 's' sound using the letters ce, c, se  - fence, certain, circle, sense
Comparing words ending in y/ey - funny, happy, money, donkey, 
The /or/ sound using the letters al, all and alk - always, call, chalk

Reading:
Please read every day and log your reading on Boom Reader.
You can read your school shared reading book 'Lost', your banded book or a book from home. 

Maths:
Please practice either Numbots/TT Rockstars or Doodle Maths - 45 minutes per week of any/each of the apps to support our Maths learning.
You can also practise your 2, 3, 5 and 10x tables on Topmarks - Hit the Button Game 
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

What a week we have had in Year 2!
Despite being another four day week, we have managed once again to have a jam-packed week full of learning!

In English we have begun to explore the story's characters in more detail. We have produced a 'role on the wall' about Zeraffa's keeper, Atir, and this led to writing a character description. We looked at adding expanded noun phrases to our writing and encouraged the children to use a range of different elements of grammar and punctuation in their writing, including conjunctions to extend our sentences and suffixes to our words.

In Maths we have continued to look at time in more depth - the children have been practising telling the time to the nearest 5 minutes. Lots of children are secure telling the time past the hour and we have been working on securing time to the next hour. 

In Science we have explored a range of seeds, and explored different ways of sorting and classifying them. The children thought about grouping the seeds by shape, size and colour, and we looked at how we could sort them based on what they would grow into - the children predicted some to be flowers, fruits and even vegetables!

We had a fantastic day on Thursday celebrating VE day. We learned all about how thousands of gave up their lives for our country, and we also talked about the impact that the war had on so many people with regard to being evacuated from their homes and had to ration their food for years, even after the war!

The children enjoyed our RE lesson on Tuesday where we explored the concept of being thankful for the gifts that we have been given. We explored the story of Jesus and the 10 Lepers, where only one man came back to say thankful for Jesus's kindness, and thought about the things that we should be thankful for.

We are very excited about our trip to Woburn next Friday - we will shortly be sending out some more information about what the children will need to bring on the day. If you have not booked on yet and your child wants to come, please make sure you do!

Have a lovely, sunny weekend!
Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Reading:
Please read daily with your adult and log it on Boom Reader.
You can read your 'Anna's Homework' book, your banded book or a book from home. 

Maths:
Please practice Numbots/TT Rockstars for 45 minutes weekly.
You can also practise your 2, 5 and 10x tables on Topmarks - Hit the Button Game 
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

Wow, is it really Friday again? We're not sure where the time is going at the moment but the children are continuing to work so hard. 

Wyatt, Harriet and lots of the children have enjoyed Art this week where we have been learning how to draw a self portrait, including thinking about the proportions of our faces, where our body parts are and looking in detail at the features of our faces that help us to identify ourselves. George loved the gallery walk where we got to see everyone's finished portraits.

Heidi and Bode enjoyed Science this week where we learned about animals and how they adapt to suit their environment. This is called adaptation! The children knew loads of facts about a range of different animals and we even played a game where we had to memorise facts about camels and how they adapt to live in the desert - the children could remember lots of information!

Myra and Lennon loved our Englishh lesson on Thursday where we looked at a range of vocabulary to describe Rapunzel and we decided how relevant each word was to the character in the story. 

Albert and loads of the children in the class loved making a potion on the field where we looked at how to describe the bubbling potions with a range of interesting ingredients inside!

Abby loved our Maths learning this week where we have continued to look at fractions, including recognising and finding 3/4 of shapes and amounts, and counting fractions to make one whole.

Caelan loved learning more about the Easter story and the days of Holy Week.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Rule - Compare: /se/ /c/ /ce/ e.g. sense, circle, science 

CEW - Eye 

Homophones: piece/peace

Maths - Numbots or TTrockstars 3 times a week 

Reading - daily and logged on boom reader as much as you can 

We learnt that when a word ends in ch, sh, s, ss, x, or z, we add -es instead. 
For example:
fox - foxes, watch - watches, hutch - hutches.

We then looked at pluralising irregular nouns and the rules above do not apply!
Tooth - teeth, foot - feet, sheep - sheep, child - children, person - people.

Reading:
Please read daily with your adults and log it on Boom Reader.
You can read your 'Invitation to a Party' book, your banded book or a book from home. 
Please ensure you return your 'Invitation to a Party' book on Monday as we will be sending our our new class reader - Anna's Homework.

Maths:
Please practice Numbots 30 minutes weekly.
You can now access TT Rockstars using the TT Rockstars website - your login is the same as your Numbots Login. I have limited the times tables you can practise to your 2's, 5's and 10's. Have fun!
You can also practise your 2, 5 and 10x tables and lots of other maths games on Topmarks!
Hit the Button Game https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button 

This week we have had a brilliant week learning a bit more about our new whole class reader, 'Rapunzel'. We have learnt a little bit about the main character, who is not your usual fairy princess. The children have read a few pages of the book, and we have stopped to write a character description.

The children have worked really hard to show us their fantastic writing skills, I have really enjoyed marking them over the weekend and seeing the progress in their writing!

In Maths this week, the children have been learning more about fractions - we have looked at 1/2, 1/4 and 1/3's of shapes and amounts, and have challenged the children to find the whole if they are only given a part! 

In PE this week we have practised throwing beanbags at targets and throw, clap, catching the beanbags to develop our throwing skills. The children particularly enjoyed dance this week, where we introduced some words and asked them to use their bodies to express these. They loved 'creeping' and 'stepping' to the Pink Panther theme tune, using their bodies at different levels to portray the music in a variety of different ways. We are looking forward to developing these sequences and adding in some more movements next week!

Have a wonderful weekend.
Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team
 

Sometimes we remove the 'e' and add ly, sometimes we replace the 'y' with an 'i' before adding -ly, and sometimes we just add -ly to the end. Feel free to explore adding these endings to adjectives to create some adverbs.

Reading:
Please read daily with your adult and log it on Boom Reader.
You can read your 'An Invitation to a Party' book, your banded book or a book from home. 

Maths:
Please practice Numbots 30 minutes weekly.
You can also practise your 2, 5 and 10x tables on TopMarks - Hit the Button Game 
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

Asia has enjoyed our English this week where we have introduced our new CLPE book - we had to predict what we thought the story might be about by only looking at a picture.

Roxie enjoyed our Science lesson this week where we created lifecycles out of play dough. We learned that frogspawn turns into tadpoles, which then grow arms and legs as they become froglets, before losing their tail when they fully form a frog.

Reuben and lots of other children loved presenting designing and presenting their Eco Heroes to the class.

Lennon has enjoyed our new topic in Maths, where we have started our new topic on Fractions.

George enjoyed sharing his book with the class on World Book Day, we also enjoyed our hot chocolate and biscuits whilst we listened to a range of stories.

We will be looking closely at our learning behaviour as a year group, in order to get through all of our very busy learning - by making sure that we are listening to instructions, not talking at the same time as others and making sure that we are completely focused during independent learning activities to ensure that we complete them to the best of our ability.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Year 2 Team

words ending in -le: table, stable, apple
words ending in -el: level, label, 
words ending in -il: until, evil, devil
words ending in -al: mental, royal, arrival
adding suffixes to words ending in -y: 
happy - happier - happiest
cry - cries - cried
adding endings to single syllable words ending in a vowel/consonant:
pat - patted, fun - funny, spot - spotting.

Y2 Common Exception words: revise all Y2 common exception words.

Reading:
Please read daily with your adult and log it on Boom Reader.
You can read your 'The Dreams of Moxie Mouse and Cat Capone' book, your banded book or a book from home. We will be changing your books on the first Monday back after half term, and your child will receive their new shared reading book 'An Invitation to a Party'.

Maths:
Please practice Numbots 40 minutes weekly.
You can also practise your 2, 5 and 10x tables on Topmarks - Hit the Button Game 
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

The children have been incredibly creative this week, in Art we have finished our final pieces of 'Frottage Collage' in which they drew and painted a water droplet, linked with our Global Learning Goal 'Clean Water and Sanitation'. They then added a range of 'frottage' through the form of rubbings around the classroom and school environment to add tone, tint and texture to their finished droplet.

In DT the children finished their final pieces of their mechanisms, they chose a character from our Class Reader 'The Lonely Beast' and decided whether they wanted to make their character into a Lever, using a pivot, or a slider, using a slot. The children's finished products looked fantastic and they were so proud to share their creations with you all today.

We loved having you all in this afternoon for Koinonia, the children were so excited to share their learning from this half term with you.

Thank you for all of your hard work and support, we look forward to welcoming the children back on the 24th February after a well earned rest.

Take care,

The Year 2 Team.

Heidi and lots of other children really enjoyed Wednesday when we did RE for the whole day - we did crafts, - Bode enjoyed making a poster all about the importance of water in our lives and to Christians. Harriet loved that we had two assemblies and learned a song about respect! Asia loved the crafting too.

Kobe has loved our Maths learning this week where we have been learning about the 5 and 10 times tables, and learning how to divide by these numbers - as well as solving lots of problems involving the times tables.

Caelan has really enjoyed our English learning, where we used our own adjectives to write expanded noun phrases about a setting. He really enjoyed sharing his writing and up-levelling it to make it more interesting.

Lennon really enjoyed making our watercycle craft out of paper plates, fluff and lots of different coloured paper.

Myra enjoyed sharing what she knows in our spelling test! 

George loved our PE this week, where we practised our passing and moving. We started to think about Netball as a game and will be practising shooting next week!

Hugo and lots of children have enjoyed the opportunity to play hockey at lunchtimes - they showed they could play in teams and had lots of fun!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

This week has been a very busy week in Year 2!
The children LOVED our Computing lesson where we learnt how to send and receive emails, as well as drawing pictures and adding attachments to our emails - we emailed Baby Bear, Anna and Doug about a range of different topics including Healthy Lunches, Celebrations and our favourite sports.

Some of the children enjoyed learning about how we get our clean water delivered to our houses. The water goes to a Water Treatment Centre where it goes through different stages to be filtered and cleaned properly.

The children also loved our English lessons this week where we have focussed on writing setting descriptions using expanded noun phrases and extending our sentences using conjunctions!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Rule -Words ending in: –y (cry)

CEW - any, many, busy, does

Special Skill - Contraction: doesn’t

Reading - 

Read your books and record them on Boom Reader 

Maths - 

Do Numbots 

We've had another busy week this week in year two and enjoyed lots of our learning.

The children have enjoyed learning lots of new skills in PE this week, in netball we have been practising three different passes - the chest pass, the shoulder pass and the bounce pass. The children have been developing their accuracy and we will be putting these into practise next week when we look at passing and moving to get the ball around the court.

We have had fun introducing the concept of division in our Maths learning. The children have learnt about arrays and making equal groups to divide numbers accurately.

In RE we have learnt about the story of the Crying Camel and been introduced to Bismallah in our topic of Islam, and have found out that Allah teaches Muslims to show compassion to everyone we meet, no matter who they are and how big or small they may be.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Year 2 Team

Happy New Year! We have had a fabulous return from the Christmas break - the children have come in smiling and ready for their learning and we are very glad to have them back.

This week we in Maths we have revisited addition and subtraction, and the children have learned a new method when solving calculations - the column method. This has been a challenge and the children have shown resilience and perseverance when using the method, especially when needing to exchange a ten or knock next door and regroup! Any practise at home would be fantastic, remember to add/subtract the ones first, carry the ten when adding or borrow a ten subtracting and to show this on your workings!

In English we have started our new CLPE book, The Lonely Beast - the children have enjoyed story mapping the story and considering the Lonely Beasts emotions as he embarks on his long journey!

We have starter our new Global Learning Goal - Clean Water and Sanitation. We talked about the importance of clean water and working toilets, how some people aren't lucky enough to have these and the impact this has on their health and hygiene. We will continue to look at this over the half term and it's going to get smelly!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Best wishes, 
Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Maths - numbats 

Reading - please read daily and record on boom reader

A big thank you for all of the children this week for working so so hard. 
Not only have the children worked hard in class, but they have worked their absolute socks off at the school performances this week. They have worked so hard to learn the songs, the dances and have the confidence to step on the stage in front of so many children and adults - we are so so proud of them.

On Friday the children across school celebrated the Festival of Lights, and learned about how this is celebrated in different religions. Year 2 learnt about the festival of 'Diwali', meaning 'rows of light. We learnt about the story of Rama and Sita, and how the heroic prince saved his princess by defeating the Evil King Ravana in a huge battle with monkeys and other animals! We learnt that good always triumphs over evil and light always triumps over darkness. The children spent the afternoon creating their own Mendhi designs and colouring their own Rangoli patterns.

Have a lovely restful weekend.

Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Reading: Please continue to read daily and log this on Boom Reader.

Maths: Please practise Numbots for 30 minutes weekly.

What a busy week we have had in Year 2!
A firm favourite from this week was our trip to St Neots, where we visited St Mary's Church to create some still life drawings of the features within the Church, including the stain glass windows, the hand carved features such as pews and the engraved stone in the ceiling of the Church, and we had a chat with Reverend Margaret who told us all about the History of the Church. As well as this, we had a fantastic opportunity to visit St Neots Museum. The children were split into two groups, each spending time looking at the part of the Museum which used to be the old Police Station, housing arrested criminals before they were sent onto court to be sentenced, whilst the other group went upstairs in the museum to learn about a variety of Victorian criminals from in and around St Neots. We were most surprised to discover that the criminals from this time ranged from 13-19 years old - just children! They were caught stealing small amounts of money, food and toys, and were sentenced to hard labour, reformatory school and even put under police watch! Most of these children were poor and hungry, which made us feel sad and incredibly lucky to have what we have in our lives - we decided that we wouldn't want to be criminals!

Have a wonderful weekend - we hope to see you at the Christmas Light Switch on this Sunday, and if you are in the school choir, please meet us at the Church at 1:20pm ready to sing our Carols at 1:30pm.

Best wishes,

Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Revisiting Year 1 - Compare: /ou/ /ow/ (shout/ crown)

New for Year 2 - Apostrophes for possession

CEW - hour

Special Skill - Homophones: hear/here

Maths  use numbots 3 times a week 

Reading Read daily and record on boom reader 

This week has been a super week in Year 2!

Hugo has really enjoyed our shared reader this week, where we have been practising reading to develop our fluency, and even performed our favourite animal poems to our friends!

Jesse has enjoyed getting outside to collect our natural materials ready to fill our newly made Bug Houses next week. We can't wait to share these with you on Friday at koinonia!

Bode has enjoyed our first rehearsal of the play where we teamed up with Year 4 to sing some of the songs and to share our fabulous dances!

Jacob has enjoyed learning all about the different 2D and 3D shapes. We have learned how to count the number of sides, the number of vertices and we have even learned about lines of symmetry. Reuben knows that a line of symmetry shows us that both sides of the shape are exactly the same, and can be vertical, horizontal or even diagonal.

George enjoyed PE this week where we have practised dribbling a range of balls with our feet showing control and coordination.

Just one more week to go until we can sit back and relax... the children have worked so hard and deserve a well-deserved rest!

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Rule - Adding suffixes to split digraph words and other words ending in ‘e’

Common Exepction Words (CEW) - old, cold, gold, hold, fold, told

Special Skill - Contraction: don’t

Maths  - Numbots 3 times a week 

Reading  - Read daily and log it on boom reader 

Spellings - 

Rule: Practise adding suffixes to split digraph words and other words ending in e

CEW: find, kind, mind, wild, child(ren), climb

Contractions: I’ll, you’ll, we’ll

Maths - Numbots 

Reading - read and record on boom reader. 

Spelling Rule: Adding endings to split digraph words - i.e. wake = waking, gaze = gazed, shade = shady.
Year 2 Common Exception Words: great, break, steak.

What a lovely week we have had in Year 2!

We started the week reading a little more into our Power of Reading book, 'The Last Wolf' and we have discovered that the last wolf on earth (in the story) is in fact not a typical scary, storybook wolf, but a kind, old wolf who lives in a cosy tree-cave with his friends, the lynx and the bear. We can't wait to find out more next week...

In Maths, we have looking in detail at multiples of 10. We have been looking at multiples of ten and using our prior knowledge of our number bonds to 10 to help us in adding and subtracting numbers to 100, for example: if 3 + 6 = 9 then 30 + 60 = 90. We also looked at how we can add and subtract ten from any number, and we noticed that the ones number stays the same and the tens number increases or decreases by one - for example, 36 + 10 = 46 and 78 - 10 = 68. Some of us even challenged ourselves to add and subtract more than one multiple of ten, and we still saw the same pattern!

In Science this week, we have been learning about local habitats. We learned that a habitat is a place that an animal lives in, that provides it with everything it needs to survive, for example, shelter, food and water. We visited our new school pond area to discover the different animals that use it as their habitat, and we revisited our learning from last week by finding things that were alive, dead and that had never been alive!

Have a lovely weekend, and please ensure that as the weather gets a little bit cooler that your child has appropriate clothing and footwear for our ever unpredictable weather.

Best wishes,
Miss Freeman and the Year 2 Team

Rule - Adding endings to split digraph words

Common Exception Words - because, again, see, sea

Special Rule - sea, see

Maths - using numbots 3 times a week 

Reading - daily and log on boom reader