Tennis, ActiveKids and Cheerleading

Year 2 have had yet another busy day today out in the sun!  Firstly this morning, we took part in a Tennis session with the Tennis coach Neil.  We worked in pairs practising our catching skills before starting to use the rackets to volley to our partner.  We then did some team games whereby we were practising our throwing and volleying skills.  It was great fun and harder than it looked!

Our next activity was ActiveKids with Dave.  Again we were focusing on our listening skills as well as our teamworking skills.  We played a game of Toilet Tag.  The taggers had to get us (we were only allowed to walk fast rather than run) and if we were caught we had to kneel down and wait for someone to pull our chain (our arm in the air).  We really enjoyed this activity (but didn't really enjoy all the flying ants that were joining in too.

The last activity we did was working on our balance.  We had to balance a cone on our heads whilst standing on one leg.  This was quite tricky!

Our last session today was Cheerleading.  We learnt some of the positions and practised our chant:  G...O...(clap, clap) G... O... (clap clap) go team, go team.  Once we had practised the moves we were then able to do them again with the pom poms.  It meant we had to listen well and keep in time with each other.

Fire Fighter Fit Kids

This afternoon, we were lucky enough to have a fitness session with a couple of Firefighters from the Kent Fire Service.  We learnt that to be a firefighter, you have to be fit and healthy.  This includes not only exercise but eating and drinking the right things too.  Before the session started, we talked about exercise and what we do to exercise.  Simon (one of the instructors) showed us his gymnastics skills by doing a handstand!

As part of the session, we learnt all of the maneuvers that you need as a firefighter, including:
- drop and roll
- jump and slide down the pole
- jump into your boots and pull up your trousers
- put on helmet
- roll out the hose
- climb the ladder
- crawl and search for casualties.

We practised each maneuver over and over.  It was hard work in the heat, but Mrs. Bryant reminded us that in real life the firefighters have to deal with much more severe temperatures than we did today!

Outdoor Week so far...

Year 2 have been extremely busy so far this week and have definitely been pushing ourselves to the limit!  We have already completed so many challenges, with many more still to come.

On Monday, we practised our skipping skills with Skip2BFit.  The children worked really hard to beat their personal best score.  A special mention to Mrs. Feria who won the skip-off in assembly, having previously achieved the highest staff skip score!

We were also lucky enough to have a session with the Ben Bullen team.  We roasted marshmallows over the fire (yum) and practised making sparks and trying to create fire using a flint and steel.   This was so tricky, but most of us managed it.

On Tuesday, we did a session called Fitness In.  During this session, we had to play the opposite game.  Our instructor said it was one of the only times that we were allowed to be naughty and do the opposite of what we're told! 

To finish our afternoon, we had a wonderful session of relaxing Yoga with Mrs. Manning.  We tried all sorts of yoga poses as well as thinking about our breathing and our posture.

Space Facts Challenge

In today's computing lesson, we reminded ourselves about what the Internet is and how information can be sent all around the world.

Mrs. Bryant set us a challenge.  Working with our partner, we had to use the Internet and the child-friendly search engines that we've learnt about to find information and answer a series of questions about Space.

We didn't always find the answer easily and some of the information we found was sometimes confusing, but we were able to change and adapt our searches to help us find the right answers.

Just in case the Internet let us down, Mrs. Bryant had some fact sheets handy.  Some of us also used these to check that the information we had found on the Internet was correct.

What makes a good friend?

In circle time this week, year 2 looked at the question: "What makes a good friend?"

We discussed what friendship is and how it works as well as thinking about what made a good friend.  The children came up with some great ideas and created their own mind map on the board using post-it notes.

We talked about the fact that you do not always get on with your friends but that it's important to listen and make things right when you do have arguments.

What is the Internet and how can we use it?

This term in year 2, we are finding out a bit more about the Internet and how it can be used to help us in school.

First of all, Mrs Bryant asked:  "What is the Internet?"  We came up with some great ideas about what sort of things we can find on the Internet but we needed a bit more help to understand what it actually was.  We watched this clip to help us:

BBC Bitesize - What is the Internet?

We talked a bit more about how the Internet can be used to communicate with people all around the world, but also how it can be used to find information.  We thought about what a search engine was.  Only a few of us had heard these words before, but we all knew what Google was!  Now we know that Google is a search engine and we can use it to find the information that we want.

Mrs Bryant then asked us: "Is everything you read on the Internet fact or real?"

Straight away, we knew that it wasn't.  Firstly, we had already talked about e-safety and know that people can sometimes pretend to be someone else in order to trick you.  Secondly, Mrs. Bryant explained that anyone can make a website and put information on it.

After that, we talked about how we might use a search engine to find the information.  We looked at the wording that we would have to use and how we might need to be really specific with our searches to find what would be suitable for us in year 2.

After lunch, we had the chance to have a go at finding some facts about space using Google.  Some of us didn't find the information we wanted and so we had to change the words in the search.

In our next computing session, we will use this information to create our own fact posters.

Why do we have rules in school?

In year 2 today, we discussed why it is important to have rules in school.  Here are some of the ideas the children came up with.

The children were then asked to think about what would happen if they came into their classroom in the morning and there were no teachers or adults.  The children came up with some great ideas, a lot of which involved partying, dancing and eating all day!  At first they seemed quite excited at the prospect of a rule free day, but then we went on to discuss the negative impact that it would have.  The children agreed that the novelty would most likely wear off after a while and they would miss having a calm and safe environment in which to learn.