Blandford St Mary Primary Year 2 - Tessellation Base

Signing off!

2009-07-27T17:40:00.008+01:00

Well here we are at the end of a wonderful year and it's time for the whole school trip to the sea side again!

We had a fabulous day!

Now it's time for Tessellation Base to sign off.

We really enjoyed looking back at our blog and realised just how much we have done and what fun we have had!

Have a wonderful summer break everybody!

More sporting fun!

2009-07-04T18:05:00.016+01:00

Here are some of the extra sporting activities we have had a chance to shine in this term.

This is our golf morning when we learnt about the game and some of the techniques of good golfing!

We have also been having weekly cricket lessons thanks to 'Chance to Shine' cricket.

Here we are in action!

Finally we had an absolute expert to demonstrate the art of speed stacking!

She then shared her skills with us and now we are all expert speed stackers!

Sports day fun!

2009-07-04T17:41:00.014+01:00

We had a wonderful time on Sports Day. We started off with a carousel of sporty challenges and then took part in a selsction of races. We tried so hard that everyone was a winner on the day!

International Arts Week

2009-06-28T12:38:00.014+01:00

The UNCRC [The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child] states that children should learn about and respect other countries and cultures. It also says children have the right to take part in a variety of activities and to develop their own individual talents.

Well here we are learning about Spain and having fantastic fun trying out new activities!

These are mosaic lizards created in the style of a very famous Spanish architect and artist Antoni Gaudi.

Here we are experimenting with watercolours to make Spanish fans.
This is the display we made of all our research.

We were very impressed that Matthew found a 'Picasso' in his garage!!

I would never have believed we had such amazing Flamenco dancers in our class!

Our visit to Streetwise.

2009-06-14T10:39:00.008+01:00

As part of our P.S.H.E. work we visited Streetwise. This is a wonderful resource that teaches children to recognise danger and keep themselves safe both at home and when out and about.

We visited the sea-side area, the park and the road and were amazed at how many things could harm us if we are not careful.

Inside the house we were particularly good at spotting dangers from electrical appliances as we had learnt about this recently at school!

There was a lot to think about but one thing we know we will not forget is..........

'Never go with a stranger however convincing they sound!'

2009-05-28T16:48:00.007+01:00

We designed these models with circuits and switches so we could create flashing lights!

2009-05-28T16:39:00.003+01:00

We learnt about switches and how they break a circuit and reconnect to turn a bulb on and off. These are two of the switches we made.

circuit training!

2009-05-09T15:45:00.004+01:00

Our topic this half term is electricity. We have learnt about the dangers of electricity and made our own safety posters. We have discovered how electricity is made and how it gets to our houses.

Here we are making bulbs light up. We found that we needed to make a complete circuit to light up the bulb. When there is a break in the circuit the electricity cannot flow around and the bulb will not light up.

Science morning with Coca-Cola and Mentos

2009-05-03T13:06:00.007+01:00

We had a fantastic morning!

First Mr Lavis showed us some amazing experiments asking "Why did that happen?"

"What will happen if I do this?"

Get a bottle of coca cola and some Mento mints.

First find a area that you can clean easily (Don't try this in the lounge at home!)

Drop a Mento into the bottle of coca cola and stand WELL BACK.
.

Before you can say 5..4..3..2..1.
BLASTOFF!!!

Then start cleaning up.

Balloon rockets

2009-05-03T10:44:00.027+01:00

We opened the Golden Envelope and read our special science question

Our question - Balloon Rockets - "Does the shape of the balloon affect the distance the rocket travels?"
We discussed it and -our prediction was - "We think it will!"
This raised a lot of other questions:

"How can we test it?"

"How will we measure the distances?"

"How will we record our results?"

"Why does this happen?"

We created our test - We made two rocket balloons, one with a round balloon and one with a long balloon.
We tried to make sure that we put the same amount of air in each balloon. We first sent the round balloon along our taut string and measured the distance it travelled.We then sent the long balloon along our taut string and measured the distance it travelled.

Our results:

Round balloon - 422cm

Long balloon - 728cm

Our conclusion -The long balloon travelled 306cm further.The science -The long thin balloon cuts through the air easier. It has a streamlined shape (like a bird or a fish).It meets less resistance than the round ballon.Perhaps this is why all the rockets you see are LONG!

If you want to make a balloon rocket look on www.sciencebob.com/experiments/balloonrocket.php

www.girlguiding.org.uk/brownies/science/activityballoonrocket.html

The market place.

2009-03-14T13:03:00.005Z

Here we are at the Enterprise trade fair.

We were very good at remembering all the prices and giving out change!

Young entrepreneurs in action!

2009-03-14T12:46:00.004Z

Enterprise Week was wonderful!

Our aim was to raise money for comic relief to help people living in difficult conditions to begin to enjoy the basic rights that we take for granted....a healthy diet, clean water, a safe home, a chance of education and training.We know that as we live in a rich country we have a responsibility to help others when we can.

We were confident that our plants would sell because they looked fantastic!

Our Designs!

2009-03-10T20:38:00.006Z

We were so inspired by Mrs. Hinsley's garden that we created our own garden designs.

Watch out Ground force!!!

Garden designers.

2009-03-10T20:08:00.007Z

Mrs. Hinsley, a local garden designer, invited us to see her garden. We had a wonderful time learning the many things that a garden can be used for. There was an entertaining area, flower beds, a herb garden, a pond, a flat lawned area for play, trees and hedges for shelter, fruit bushes and an apple tree, a shed for storage and compost bins and water butts for essential recycling!

World Book Day

2009-03-05T20:45:00.035Z

Today was World Book Day. We all dressed up as story book characters and shared our favourite books.

This is Mrs. Rees and Mrs Hargreaves as Allan Ahlberg's Burglar Bill and Burglar Betty!

As it was World Book Day,however, we thought about children in other countries who are just like us and have a right to education but because of war or difficult conditions do not have books to teach or entertain them.We thought that by selling our plants and raising money for comic relief we might be able to help other children in the world enjoy books too.

Satoshi Kitamura’s illustration of Articles 28 & 29 from the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child.

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - Article 28
All children and young people have a right to free primary education. Children should be
encouraged to go to school to the highest level they can.

Tessellation Base Garden Centre.

2009-03-05T20:06:00.012Z

This half term our topic is 'Global Gardens'.We are looking at gardens around the world and how much of what we need is grown. In science we have looked at the parts of a plant, its life cycle and the different ways plants reproduce.
We have made a wonderful garden centre in our class!
As next week is 'Enterprise week' at our school we thought we could raise money by creating new plants and selling them.
Here we are preparing our plants.

Firefighters in action!

2009-02-10T19:19:00.010Z

Firefighters came in today to tell us about their job.

They showed us their uniforms and explained that they were made of a special material to stop them catching fire.

They told us we must all check our smoke alarms and plan an exit route for everyone at home.

They reminded us of a special rule of fire safety. "In the event of a fire -

"GET OUT, STAY OUT and CALL THE FIRE BRIGADE OUT!"

New Recruits

It's Snowing!!

2009-02-02T21:35:00.006Z

Snow is wonderful! Snow is fantastic! Snow is exciting!

Let it snow!

Fire creations

2009-02-02T21:23:00.006Z

Here we are layering tissue paper to make colourful flame collages.

And this is us planning our fire dance.

It's a material world!

2009-01-23T18:48:00.007Z

In our science we are learning about materials; their properties and their uses.

We have sorted classroom objects into sets of different materials and cleverly overlapped sets where two materials were used e.g. a glass jar with a plastic lid.

We have thought about which materials are suited for certain purposes and have searched our rooms at home for which materials were used and why.Some, like wood are very strong and used for furniture; others, like wool are soft and great for carpets, some like plastic, are smooth and easy to clean and are ideal for children's toys.

We have decided that the wooden houses of the seventeenth century were probably not a good choice of building material especially when houses were built so close together and had open fires for heat and light! In fact they were quite possibly largely responsible for the rapid spread of fire in the Great fire of London!

New Term!

2009-01-23T18:15:00.011Z

Happy New Year from everyone in Tessellation Base!

This half term our topic is fire. We started by looking at traditional tales from different cultures and myths about fire.

We then looked at how artists have represented fire in their paintings. We looked at the shapes of flames and spent some time experimenting mixing shades and tones in paint.

We then created our own fire paintings which look quite amazing!

Christmas

2008-12-30T20:25:00.008Z

We had a fantastic time preparing for Christmas.

These are our Christmas cards and calendars.

This is our Nativity play for our Christmas Assembly.

And here we are having our Christmas party!!

Our maps.

2008-12-30T20:15:00.006Z

We found our school on Google Earth and looked at maps of our local area. We drew our own maps of the route we took to Blandford museum

follow up work

2008-12-30T19:56:00.003Z

We looked at photographs of the old school and our school today. We researched what school days were like for our grandparents and all decided that we prefer ours!

Trip to Blandford Museum

2008-11-27T20:29:00.009Z

In our topic work we have been researching our family trees and finding out what life was like when our grandparents were growing up.We wanted to find out more about the past in our local area so we booked a visit to the Blandford museum.

We saw an amazing model of the railway which used to run through Blandford. It had been carefully made using old photographs to make sure all the details were accurate.

We then examined a selection of photographs ourselves to find out more about life in Blandford in the past.

We particularly liked the pictures of horses and carriages one hundred years ago and children playing in the very streets cars zoom along today!

If you would like to find out more about this wonderful local resource look on the website www.blandfordtownmuseum.org

Peter Pan Day

2008-11-09T16:10:00.005Z

Here we are back after half term and having great fun on Peter Pan day whilst raising funds for the wonderful Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Writing instructions

2008-10-31T11:34:00.005Z

We wrote out our recipes remembering all we had learnt about presentation; title, ingredients in a list, short numbered instructions- each on a new line- and of course including a good variety of 'bossy verbs'!

Step by step pizzas

2008-10-30T22:48:00.006Z

Here we are making our pizzas. We thought carefully about getting everything in the right order!

Who wants a piece of our 'Magnificent pizza'?

Pizza making

2008-10-30T21:53:00.004Z

Last week we designed and made our own pizzas.

We looked at where the ingredients came from and marked the countries on the map.

We thought that if we used local produce next time we could save lots of 'air miles'!

Arm wrestling competition!

2008-10-17T17:35:00.009+01:00

This week we learnt about bones, joints and muscles. Muscles help us move all the jointed parts of our bodies. When we exercise we get warm because our muscles are burning up the food we eat for fuel and this makes heat.

We had an arm wrestling competition to get our muscles working!

We could feel our muscles contract and relax.

Here are the semi finalists battling it out!

This is the most exciting and closely fought final!

And this is Emma,
Tessellation Base Arm Wrestling champion!

Congratulations to everyone for excellent sportsmanship. We had a great afternoon!

The Life van

2008-10-12T11:26:00.006+01:00

The life van came and the leader Pat showed us a model of inside our bodies. We were able to find and light up the heart, the lungs, the intestines and the brain.

Then Harold came out! He wasn't happy. He was worried about one of his friends who was sad at school. We were able to give him lots of advice about how to look after your friends and how to stay happy and healthy.

If you would like to find out more about Pat, Harold and the life van please visit

http://www.lifeeducationdorset.org.uk/

Bodyworks

2008-10-12T11:01:00.002+01:00

This week we have been learning how our bodies work. We noticed after our daily exercise that our bodies change. We become hot, sweaty, tired, breathless and our hearts beat faster. We measured our pulse rates before and after exercise to see how much faster they were beating.

We learnt that we sweat to cool down, we breathe faster to get more air into our lungs and our heart beats faster to carry the oxygen around the body faster.

Aren't our bodies amazing!

Juice Tasting

2008-09-28T13:53:00.003+01:00

We learnt we should be eating 5 portions of fruit and vegetables every day. One way to add portions is to drink a fruit juice.

Here we are tasting fruit juices to see which ones we like and could add to our daily menus.

We thought we would try some unusual flavours to challenge our taste buds!
We tried blueberry, cranberry, pomegranate and pineapple.
Pineapple was the outright winner with 16 votes!

Healthy lunchboxes

2008-09-28T13:50:00.001+01:00

We designed healthy lunchboxes making sure we had foods from each important group.
Matthew decided to use brown bread for his sandwiches because it’s a bit healthier!

‘Fighting Fit’

2008-09-28T13:46:00.002+01:00

Our topic this half term is ‘fighting Fit’.

In addition to enjoying our daily exercise we have been learning about healthy eating. We sorted foods into groups and found out why we need certain foods for health and growth.

Making decisions

2008-09-21T16:59:00.002+01:00

These are our school council representatives. Here they are telling us about school council and collecting our ideas. At the moment in Tessellation Base we are considering how we would like our toilet area decorated. We have thought of a sea-side or underwater scene, a country view with flowers and butterflies, amagical land with story characters, or a selection of tessellations. We are still thinking so.....watch this space!

Having Our Say!

2008-09-21T16:51:00.002+01:00

In Tessellation Base we all want to be happy, safe and able to learn. These are our rights. We agree that to achieve this we all have certain responsibilities. This is our class charter. It sets out what we all want for our class.

More exercise!!

2008-09-17T21:02:00.020+01:00

In week two we enjoyed some aerobics.

Daily exercise!

2008-09-17T21:02:00.016+01:00

Here we are enjoying our daily exercise.

The first week we practised all sorts of skipping.

Introduction to Tessellation Base

2008-09-17T21:02:00.011+01:00

Mrs Rees and Mrs Hargreaves would like to welcome you to Tessellation Base.