Monday, May 30, 2011

Year 2 Sing-a-Long

On Wednesday we are having a concert in the hall with the other year 2 classes. It begins at 2pm and all family and friends are welcome to come along. One of the songs we will all be singing is Build me up Buttercup.  You can practise the song here:



You can also practise A Whole New World using the video that is already on the blog.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Disco Fever

Last Friday we had a "dis-go" to farewell the old hall before it is upgraded. The junior disco was HUGE!! There was dancing, singing, running, glow sticks, sausages and general chaos! A good time was had by everyone. Thanks to the PTA and the teachers who manned the lines at the door, sold sausages and glow sticks, and checked that everyone left in the safety of a parent. We can't wait till the next disco in our brand new hall.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Let's get Skipping!!

This week the school recieved a very generous donation from JB Anderson and Zumba Fitness to say thank you for the use of the school hall after the earthquake. This money was used to buy two class sets of skipping ropes. Room 16 are the first class to test them out. We are going to keep using them in fitness this term so that we can all become fantastic skippers. A huge thanks to JB and Zumba Fitness.


Sunday, May 22, 2011

Science Science Science

This week we began learning how to carry out a science investigations. On Monday Miss Archbold showed us an experiment using milk, food colouring and dishwashing liquid. We put 3 different colours into a bowl of blue milk. Next we added a drop of dish washing liquid. The food colouring showed how the dishwashing liquid races around looking for the fat in the milk. We used this experiement to come up with our own investigations.

This is what we had to do:

1. Ask a question.
Our question was: "What would happen if we used a different liquid?" We decided to try green milk, flavoured milk, soy milk, cream and lemonade. The blue milk was used as our control.

2. Make a prediction.
We all made a prediction about the liquid that our group was going to test.


3. Make it a fair test.
We had to make sure that we kept everything except the liquid the same. We had to use the same amount of liquid, food colouring and dishwashing liquid. We also had to use the same sized container for each test.

4. Measure the results.
We decided to time how long it took for the food colouring to return to the middle of the bowl.
Here are our results:
Blue Milk - 2 mins, 53 secs.
Soy Milk - 3 mins, 35 secs.
Green Milk - Over 7 mins
Flavoured Milk - over 7 mins.
Lemonade - No movement at all.
Cream - No movement at all.

5. Analyse the results.
We decided that the colour moved for longer when there was less fat, because the dishwashing liquid had to hunt for longer before it found enough fat. This meant that the soy milk had a little bit less fat than the blue milk, and the green/flavoured milk had a lot less fat than blue milk. The lemonade had no movement because it has no fat at all. We know that cream has fat so the reason it didn't move was because the cream was too thick.

You could try an investigation of your own at home. You might change the amount of liquid, the size of the container, or the amount of dish washing liquid. Remember to keep the test fair by keeping all of the other ingredients the same.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Fun with Clay

On Thursday we had our first play with clay. We talked about where clay comes from and what we have to do to be able to work with it. We found out that it is much easier to work the clay when our hands are wet. Some people had their science minds switched on and were asking lots of questions about turning clay into a liquid and what happens once it has been fired. We experimented with the clay by pushing, pulling and twisting to see what happens.





















Next we made the surface of the moon and used the tools in our clay kits to add texture. After that we added moon men. Here are some very funky results.










Friday, May 6, 2011

Crumpet, the Cat

This week we have been reading Crumpet, the Cat for our big book. We have been working on reading together, looking carefully to make sure we are reading without mistakes, and using expression. We made a podcast of our reading.


Pirate Day I.T.

On pirate day last term we all had a go at using a green screen. Ms Dowd filmed us in front of the screen and then used her awesome I.T skills to put in some pirate backgrounds. This is exactly the same as what you see on the news every night when the weather comes on. Very clever! We also had a play with photo booth on the laptops. Here is the result of our work.


Tuesday, May 3, 2011

1000!!!!!!!!!

We have hit 1000 pageviews on our blog in just 1 term. It's great to know that people are having a look to see what's happening with the amazing children in Room 16. Our next target - 2000!!




Saturday, April 16, 2011

Holiday Time

What a crazy term this has been. I think you are all ready for a break after the huge amount of learning and fun that we have cramed into our disrupted term! Here are a few reminders for the break:

1. Look at your goal setting sheets in your home/school books and work on your goals at home. See if you can find some fun ways to practise.

2. Write down everything you read for the Reading Crusade. You can register your reading at http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/readingcrusade/ or keep a record of your reading and I will register you next term.

3. Help out at home where ever you can.

Have a fantastic break, stay safe and enjoy your easter bunny treats.

End-of-Term Mini Concert

On the last day of school we performed a concert for Mrs Warren, Room 15 and some parents. We sang "Morning Town Ride" and "Mr Clickety-Cane". We also sang "A Whole New World". We have been practising this song for weeks to get it right, because there are parts in the song where the boys sing different lines than the girls, but at the same time. It's pretty tricky stuff!! We filmed our practise earlier in the day to put on the blog, but unfortunately they were accidently deleted from the camera. Woops! However, when it came down to the real performance the class sang 100 times better than the practise. You were absolutely fantastic. Mrs Warren thought that you were amazing. You even bought a tear to Jeannie's eye! It was a great way to finish the term. Here is a video of the song so you can sing along at home.