Funky Chicken

Primary 2 Bumblebees won the Funky Chicken at assembly this week - a nice end to our assembly! We won it for having the tidiest classroom when Mrs Holt came to visit each class. We get to keep him for a week. Miss Scott promised to teach us a funky chicken dance if we won - look out for photos of this to come! Well done Primary 2 - keep up the hard work. 

Kindness Assembly

This week it was the Primary 2's turn to do assembly. We did our assembly on kindness. Everyone did a super job of using a loud, clear voice so that everyone could hear us. It was extra special to get to be on the stage! We made up a kindness song, told the story of 'The Crayon Box that Talked' and acted out and shared different ways to be kind. Well done Primary 2!

 

 

"We are a box of crayons, each one of us unique,

but when we get together, 

the picture is complete."

What's the Time Mr Wolf?

We had fun outside doing maths last week. We practised setting the time on the clock and reading the time to help us play 'What's the Time Mr Wolf'

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Kindness Week

Across the school we are having kindness week. One of the activities we did was making bird cakes so that we can be kind to birds. This was a bit of a smelly and sticky job but we worked well and realised that birds would benefit from it. The primary two classes worked together well on this. Conrad kindly hung up the bird cakes outside for us so that we can go on a hunt for them on a day when the grass is dry.

We have also written 'Recipe for Kindness' poems and made a box of Kindness Crayons, where everyone has written something kind about every other person in the class. 

Author Visit - Victoria Campbell

On Wednesday we were very lucky to have an author visit the school and each class got the opportunity to work with her. The primary ones and twos came together for the session. Victoria has had her first book 'Viking Gold' published and is currently writing the sequel. 

She started by telling us how she became an author

Then she told us about all the people and steps involved from the writing process, to getting the book sold in a shop, and used volunteers to help us remember. It starts with the writer who then gets an agent. The author and agent work with a publisher who gets an editor to check over the book. The book is then sent to the printer. Once the book is printed the distributor sends it out to shops. The shop assistant then sells the book to people who would like to read it.

Victoria read us the first couple of pages of her book.

The children were given the chance to ask her some questions.

We enjoyed our time with her and there have been a few books started at the writing table in class since she visited!

Handwriting

In the last few weeks we have had a big focus on handwriting, encouraging the use of neat handwriting whenever we do any written work. We set up a few stations last week to give us practise at forming letters correctly, and to develop more refined motor skills. 

One activity was using the light box.

We practised using tweezers to pass counters 

from one plate to another to help develop motor skills.

We also passed pompoms. 

We had a go at tracing patterns to help 

develop pencil control. 

The final station was letter formation, trying to 

remember to start letters at the correct places and

 make each letter the right shape and size.

Roots and Shoots Bumblebee Bake Sale

The 'Save the Bees' Bake sale that the Primary 2 classes organised before Christmas has won the school a Bronze Award from the Roots and Shoots organisation. Well done Primary 2! 

Paired Reading

Because of the mid-term break we are not doing homework. We have done lots of reading in class however, and today we spent some time doing paired reading. In pairs children read their books to each other and gave them a piece of good feedback about their reading. It was great to hear the buzz of lots of children reading at once and we had a super discussion when giving each other feedback.
 

Birdwatch

We did our birdwatch on Monday and saw lots of a small variety of birds. Everyone worked well together to record the results on the counting chart and the binoculars were passed around for everyone to have a go. We saw a couple of flocks of birds so had to guess at how many birds were in the flock! We logged our results on the RSPB website and were able to make a chart with the 5 types of bird we saw most of. The chart was unable to be copied on to the blog so we had to take a picture of the screen - apologies for the blurry photo.

Not included on the chart are the sparrows and starlings that we spotted.

 

Library Van

On Thursday the Library Van came to the school. All classes get the chance to borrow books and they stay in school until the next visit. We spent some time enjoying these books together in class.

    

Feeding the birds

We put our bird feeders outside before we do our birdwatch. We hung some of them around the trim track and Conrad kindly helped us to hang some from the eves outside the classroom. We hope that this will invite birds to come and visit, and give us more to count on Monday.