Our wonderful day at Le Ferradou

Thank you to our French teachers who arranged a super cooperation day for us with our friends from a nearby French school - Le Ferradou. As you can see from the slideshow below, we had a really fun and creative day AND we practiced lots of French!

Taekwondo fun for 'Health and Sports Week'

Mud structures

During playtime at the Village Gaulois we noticed that some people in Year 2 love digging up mud and finding sticks/leaves/stones to make houses! Our new unit of inquiry is about shelter. This is our central idea -

Human shelters have adapted over time and vary according to their environments.

So, we thought we'd follow up on the spontaneous building with a whole class activity using mud, sticks and other materials from the ground to create shelters. 

Year 4 are doing a unit of inquiry into structures and they too have been spontaneously building and forming bricks so it was an ideal time to get together for some team-work. The Y4's central idea is -

Shape and space affects the design of structures and their environments.

Here's a slideshow of our endeavours:

Visit to the Village Gaulois - finding out about how the Gauls lived over 2000 years ago

Here are some photos of our trip to the Village Gaulois.

Ice skating Risk Takers

On Monday we went on a trip with the PE teachers to the ice skating rink in Blagnac. Before we set off we discussed our feelings and they were mixed! There was nerves, excitement and curiosity. 

At the rink the first challenge was putting on the heavy ice skating boots. Once on the ice there was lots of laughter. Nearly everyone fell at least once (except the teachers!). 

Here are some photos and one of the poems we wrote in response to the experience!

Ice Skating Risk Takers

Skating as fast as a flash

Struggle with laces

Done

Whizzing along

Cold solid ice

Smooth and flat

Sharp metal blades shave piles of powdery ice

Children everywhere

Skating as fast as the wind

Passing a fallen friend

Lend a hand and

They’re up!

Powdery ice on our gloves

Big wobbly helmet blocks my view

The scratch of blades on ice

Children everywhere

Ferme d'en Barrus

On Monday we visited a working farm where they keep goats and make goat's cheese. 

Investigating fractions of hexagons

Can you think of any other ways?

Socktopus

We followed instructions and worked through a process to use odd socks to make socktopuses.

Afterwards we storyboarded the process and wrote a set of instructions - a socktopus recipe!

Golden Time bees

Where does honey come from?

Year 2 learnt about the honey making process from Mrs Kneur, who used to be a bee-keeper. She shared her experience and knowledge with the children and answered their thoughtful questions.
Later in the day they worked in groups, using the BeeBots, to retell the 'story' of honey.

Making fraction walls

What is the tallest wall you can make? What is the lowest wall?

Making a base of 12 gave us a good wall. Some children discovered that numbers like 7, 17 and 19 could only have the base layer and a layer of one cubes and this led to a discussion on prime numbers.

Inventing our own celebrations

In the 6 weeks between the Christmas holiday and the February break we carried out our first PYP unit of inquiry. Our central idea was 'We understand and value our culture and celebrations and those from around the world'. At the end of the unit we had learnt a lot about celebrations and our teachers wanted to give us the chance to show our learning. They asked us to invent our own celebrations. Some of us chose to work independently and others in pairs. Here are some photos of us working and during the presentation of our celebrations.

Chinese New Year celebration in Y2

Learning about features of weddings from Mrs Baldwin

Mrs Baldwin came in to tell Y2 about her wedding. She had lots of great artefacts to show us, including her dress, and we learnt lots of new vocabulary. We listened to some of the music that Mrs Baldwin had when she got married. 

Balloon investigations

During our 'See, think, wonder' task at the start of our programme of inquiry we came up with some interesting questions about balloons. So we did some exploration and some more wondering...

Pushing our breath into the balloons was hard and we were excited by the push of the air coming out and the funny way the balloons travelled across the room as the air escaped. The noise was interesting too - by varying the size of the mouth of the balloon we could change the sound. Sometimes it was very high-pitched.

We worked out that this push, powering the balloon forward, would allow us to make a balloon rocket.

We also found out that gas is produced/released when some ingredients are combined. This gas can be contained and will inflate a balloon.

Fireworks in chalk and oil pastel

A festival from Japanese culture

We had a wonderful visitor in Y2 who told us all about Hinamatsuri which is also called Doll's Day or Girls' Day. It is a special day in Japan. Hinamatsuri is celebrated each year on 3rd March. Thank you to E for teaching us such a lovely Japanese song.

Celebration mindmap

Our assembly

We had a busy time preparing for our assembly. Here are just a couple of photos.

A short clip of our lion dance rehearsal

Deciding on ways to group

Sorting and grouping the celebrations that are important in our families.  After much discussion we decided that all our celebrations could fit under four headings: individual/personal, national, international and religious.

A celebration from Indian culture - Diwali

Today Anaya's mum, Nargis and Anaya herself came in to Y2 to tell us about how Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated in their home country, India. They brought in lots of artefacts for us to explore and also told us the story of Rama and his beautiful wife Sita. We found lots of similarities with other festivals from our previous experience and from our home countries. There was question time at the end. Well done for your great questions Y2 especially Niko who asked if Diwali is celebrated at the same time each year.

Chinese New Year

We have been making comic strips to tell the story of Nian.

 And we have been having a go at writing our names in Chinese.

Celebrations posters in our home languages

Last week's homework was to have a discussion at home around the word ‘celebrations’ from our central idea. The task was to make a poster in their home language on the theme celebrations. Some children who speak English at home decided to make their poster in French. Back in class we shared the posters and learnt from each other.