Year 2 - Maths
This morning in maths, we recalled our number bonds to 10. The children used ten frames and counters to represent their number sentence and wrote it alongside. We then applied our knowledge of number bonds to 10, to answer questions that were trying to trick us. However there was no fooling us as the children knew exactly what they needed to do and solved the problems. We will be moving on to fact families to 10 and 20 in our upcoming maths lessons.
Whole School Worship with Rev Ben
Rev Ben taught us all about the value of thankfulness this week. He told us the story of the Jews being freed from slavery and how they lost sight of the good things God had given them, so they were left to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. The children loved interacting with the story and shared their ideas on how we can focus on the good.
Year 2 English
This morning, we introduced our new book for English this half term. We are reading Jack and the Baked Beanstalk. The is a classic fairytale with a twisted plot. We revealed the front cover and generated questions using our question hand. This encouraged us to use a range of openers for our questions such as ‘Who, What, Where, When, Why’. The children had lots of different questions based on their initial reactions to the title and cover.
Whole-School Worship: Allhallowtide & Praying for Peace
This morning Mrs Ham reminded us of the Christian season of Allhallowtide starting with All Hallows’ Eve tomorrow - Hallow means Holy and it is a time to be mindful of the good we can do in the world, All Saints’ Day on Wednesday - when Christians remember the good the saints have done, and All Souls‘ Day on Thursday - when we think of those who have died and are in heaven. We discussed Remembrance day which is coming up shortly, where we remember soldiers who have died in the wars. We also thought about the conflict in Israel and Gaza and prayed for those who are suffering in this war. We watched some newsround videos to learn about how children in Gaza and Israel are being affected and we thought of some ways that we can be like saints and help. Peyton said we can pray to God for them and Darcy, Jack and Naomi said we can donate money, clothes and toys to the children who have lost their homes and belongings. To finish we sang a 'Song of Peace' where we wished for a world where hate and war would cease and the everyone in the world could live in peace.
Harvest Church Service 2023
A huge well done to our WOW (Worship our Way) group and our choir for leading our Harvest Church service and to Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 for their wonderful contributions. Thank you so much for your generosity shown towards Darwen Food Larder and DARE (Darwen Asylum and Refugee Enterprise). All of the photos can be found here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/harvest-church-service-2023 and the videos are posted on classdojo.
Whole-School Worship: Moses Saves God’s People
This week, Rev Ben led our worship, teaching us all about the story of Moses parting the Red Sea, and how that was all a part of God’s great rescue plan. The children loved acting out the story. We also spent some time reflecting on God’s generosity towards the Israelites.
Year 2 PE- Parachute
Mrs Ham had the pleasure of teaching Year 2 PE this afternoon. The children started off by discussing why it is important to warm up and we had some great answers such as, so that we don’t pull a muscle and so that we get our heart beating fast, so that lots of oxygen can go to our muscles. We played a fun game of monkey tig to warm up and felt our hearts afterwards and noticed they were beating much faster and we were breathing harder and taking in more oxygen. We then had lots of fun playing several parachute games such as cat and mouse, swapping places underneath the parachute, flying animals and a team game where each team had to get the ball off the opposite side of the parachute. We cooled down at the end tucked up under the parachute and did some cool down stretches as we had been using our arms so much. Well done Year 2, what superstars!
Week 5 - Sports Club
For our final week at Sports Club, we combined all of our skills learnt over past half-term. We hopped, balanced, threw, jumped, side stepped and curled. A fun last week for our sports stars!
Year 2 - Art
This afternoon, we combined our knowledge of pattern making and handling clay to create our clay tiles. This required lots of steps and skills which we had practised last week. We had to; roll the clay out (this needed some strong arms), cut the tile to an accurate size, ensure our tiles had straight, sharp edges, etch our names onto the back and score lines onto the back. Once we had completed all of these steps, it was time to create our patterns. We used various objects to create shapes that repeated or alternated. Some children decided to to use their hands as tools by creating their own shapes with craft knives. It was fascinating to see how each child chose their own patterns and had such diverse ideas.
Whole School Celebration Worship
To start our celebration worship this morning, we reflected on another busy week. We talked about a couple of highlights such as our ‘Hello Yellow Day’ to celebrate World Mental Health Day, A Let’s Sing Together workshop and library visits for years 3 and 5. We then presented our value award winners for this week. Well done to Harry, Eva, Scarlett, Arabelle, Darcy, Reuben, Will and Isaac for demonstrating the 4Bs. We then said congratulations to India Mill for achieving the most value points this week and an even bigger congratulations to River Darwen who are our overall value award winners for this half term who will celebrate with something of their choice next Thursday. Our well-being warriors then announced the six winners for our ‘Hello Yellow’ self affirmations poster competition who were Molly, Mila, Summer, Lucy, Lilly and Alice. Also, we said a huge congratulations to our Y5/6 football team for their superb talent and sportsmanship last night as they won both matches, Reception and Year 5 for being the super attendance award winners this week and Jake in Year 5 for getting his pen license. We then celebrated our out of school achievements. Well done to Marley for her drawing certificate that she achieved at Rainbows, Harriet for achieving 75m in her swimming, Grace for achieving a special honours award in her Jazz, Poppy for getting player of the match in her football, Layla for her football award that she achieved by attending Blackburn Rovers, Alby for reading 6 different books as part of the summer Reading challenge and Vienna for achieving 20m in her swimming without armbands. We ended our worship with a lovely prayer from Rev Ben and a reminder about our Harvest Celebration at St Barnabas Church next Thursday 19th October at 9.30am. Everyone is welcome and we would really appreciate some donations for the local food bank. Thank you for your continued support and we wish you all an enjoyable weekend.
Year 2 - Local History
This afternoon, Year 2 set off on a local history walk to explore the events that happened when Gandhi came to visit Darwen in 1931. We visited the lodges that were home to mill workers and this was also the place that Gandhi stayed during his visit. The children learnt why Gandhi was invited to Darwen by Percy Davies the owner of Greenfield Mill. We walked past where this mill used to be and there is now a stone in place to show where it once stood (see photo). Mill workers wanted to speak to Gandhi to discuss his campaign for Indian independence from the British Empire which resulted in the cotton boycotts. One Darwen lady said ‘your boycott is putting us into poverty’. I’ll let the children tell you how Gandhi responded. The walk was really enjoyable in the sunshine, we ended with a story in Jacks Key. The story explores the remarkable life of Gandhi and the interesting events of his life.
Week 4- Sports club
This week we worked in teams to create our own obstacle courses for our team and the rest of the club to try. Each group got the same set of equipment and had 5 minutes to create a fun and interesting obstacle course for the rest of the teams to try. We had so much fun!