Year 2 have worked incredibly hard this half term and have been fascinated to learn about some wonderful explorers.

After finding out that Captain James Cook was a sailor and explored the world on his three voyages, we started our work on oceans. How amazing they are! We now know that there are five in the world and learnt some very interesting facts about them. We were fascinated to find out that oceans have 5 layers and enjoyed learning about the creatures that live there.

We enjoyed making a model of the ship Captain Cook used for his first voyage The ‘Endeavour’ and of Tahiti, the island he visited to observe the Transit of Venus.

After learning all about the adventures of Captain Cook and Neil Armstrong, we were very keen to find out about other explorers including Mae Jemison and Amelia Earhart. To conclude our ‘Explorers’ topic, we were set the challenge of completing a project of our own about an explorer of our choice.

To do this, we were very resourceful just like Helpful Hen and carried out lots of research so that we could create a fact file.

Thinking like a geographer, we plotted the explorer’s journey on a map of the world. Those of us who researched Neil Armstrong or Mae Jemison drew our own map showing their journey into space.

We had lots of fun making models, drawing/painting pictures and portraits of our chosen explorer. How creative we are in Year 2!

This week our science investigation question was ‘Which mini beasts would we see outside in Autumn?’ 
Firstly we learnt about different mini beasts and found out what kind of habitats they like to live in. We then worked in trios to plan our habitat, thinking about micro habitats offering food, water and shelter. 
On Friday we created our habitats. We used natural materials from around the school grounds.

We then put these in places where we thought we’d attract creatures. We will check on these next week to see if any creatures have made our habitats their home. Whilst outside we were very lucky to come across some eggs! We found out these were slug eggs…how exciting! ? 

We have had a great first week in 2C starting our new ‘Kolkata’ topic. Firstly we shared what e already know about India and what we want to find out during the topic. We then used an atlas to locate India on a world map. We then located Kolkata on a map of India. Following on from this we located the capital city of India – New Delhi. We then also located the surrounding seas and neighboring countries. 
In reading, we found out further information about India including traditional clothes, national symbols of the country, languages spoken, animals, currency, population and climate. 
We then looked at an image of a river. We thought about what we could notice in the image and shared thoughts we had. Next week, we will be investigating this famous river further…

First we used wax crayons to practice mark making…

Next we used wax crayons to create colourful webs. We tried to include some marks we had practiced earlier…

Then we used water colours to create a green wash background to our web…

We wanted to add leaf prints to our background. We collected leaves from outside, we then carried out observational sketches of our leaves…

We the made leaf printing blocks out of foam. We then mixed colours to create different tones of green paint. We then printed onto our webs…

We then learnt how to do the running stitch. We added thread to our webs using the running stitch…

Finally, we added sequins, wax crayon and felt tip to add colour, sparkle and definition to our webs. They look truly amazing! Once displayed we will share our web gallery! 

In English this week, we researched facts about spiders. We then wrote some fantastic non chronological reports about spiders ?