Latchford St James CE Primary

Year 2 had the BEST day for Sports Day! We skipped, played football, went over obstacle courses, played rugby, tried out crazy golf... and got VERY VERY wet!

We have been looking at printing techniques in Art this week. The children spent an afternoon experimenting using a range of tools such as Lego, bubble wrap and bottle tops! Next week we will be creating repeating patterns with the tools we have selected. 

The children loved the gymnatics session on Tuesday with Mrs Cresswell from Real PE. They were able to explore lots of different equipment and challenge themselves. Well done Year 2!

In our 'Discipleship' topic Year 2 have role played the story of John the Baptist and the reasons why Jesus felt it was important to be baptised. 

Year 2 have been learning about Andy Goldsworthy in Art. They have created their own individual sculptures using clay, before spending an afternoon working with a partner  creating their own land art.

The children, both in school and at home, had an amazing day for World Book Day. They took part in live book readings with the staff, they enjoyed dressing up for their morning Google Meets  and they had to guess the mystery readers behind the books. The whole school, from Nursery to Year 6, read the Charlie Mackesy book, 'The Boy, the mole, the fox and the horse' and took part in activities based around some of the beautiful quotes. 

To celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Year 2 spent the day researching hedgehogs for their topic 'Animals including Humans'. We spent the day reading about famous women scientists such as Mary Anning and Marie Curie, researching and writing about hedgehogs and creating hedgehog art before finally taking part in a virtual visit to Hedgehog Rescue Lowton. We found out about how to care for sick hedgehogs and even got to meet a few! The children produced some amazing work and asked Irene some fantastic questions during the Google Meet. Great learning Year 2!

The children celebrated Chinese New Year on the last day of half term. They enjoyed some Chinese Food, practised Qi Gong or dragon themed yoga, made lanterns and learnt how to write their names in Chinese writing. Well done Year 2!

Neave is very proud of her Chinese heritage and wanted to say 'Happy New Year' to all of her LSJ friends. 

This week we have learned lots of important facts about how we can stay safe on the internet. The children watched a lesson from the BBC and also created some wonderful posters to tell others how they too can stay safe online. Here is a selection of our work.

We know that to keep a healthy mind it helps to have a healthy body so we have spent the week meditating, practising yoga, dancing and completing mindfulness challenges. 

Year 2 have spent the week discussing what mental health is, how we can stay mentally healthy and how we can support others who may be struggling with their own mental health. We have read 'The Dot' by Peter Reynaulds, 'The Colour Monster' by Anna Llenas and 'A Huge Bag of Worries' by Virgina Ironside. We know that it is important to be able to identify your feelings so that it is easier to talk about them, that worries won't go away by themselves and it is good to share your worries with someone you trust. We finished the week with an 'Express Yourself' dressing up day and a 'Fun Friday'. 

We read the Huge Bag of Worries about a girl called Jenny whose worries followed her around and kept on getting bigger and bigger. We found out that it isn't good to ignore worries and when you speak to someone about them it makes the worry easier to deal with. We brainstormed what we can do when we or others have worries. In the Colour Monster we found out about different emotions and talked about what we love, fear, what makes us angry, sad and happy. We made our own 'monster worry boxes' so that if we ever have a worry we have somewhere to put them.

We read 'The Do't and discussed how Vashti's feelings change throughout the story because her teacher believed in her, encouraged her to be brave and try something new. We looked at Kandinsky's 'dot' artwork and tried some ourselves. 

All week we had been discussing 'expressing ourselves' and how important it is to speak up and tell people how you are feeling. We decided to show each other something that we love through our clothes. The children all looked fantastic and it was lovely to see so many smiles on our Google Meet!

At the start of lockdown, Mrs Marsden came in to school early one morning and found a mystery egg in the library! Year 2 worked together to find the clues left by the mystery animal and, after careful consideration and discussion, decided that the most likely suspect was the Chinese Dragon. Mrs Marsden found a story about dragons called 'The Dragon Machine' by Helen Ward and the Year 2's have been working extremely hard to produce some amazing writing based on the book.