Another busy week has flown by in Year 2. This week our focus has continued to follow the lives of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale. Year 2 were lucky enough to have a visit from Florence Nightingale herself last week, who zoomed us from her childhood bedroom in Embley Park. She told us all we needed to know about her childhood, adult life and the conditions of the hospital upon her arrival at Scutari! We had the most wonderful time chatting to her and she even sent us some souvenirs to take home. In Literacy we planned and wrote biographies, and I was so impressed with the children’s determination and focus throughout this writing task that I was sure they had actually been written by Year 3 children! They also learned all about how Mary Seacole travelled to London from Jamaica, and faced much racial prejudice when trying to help during the Crimean War. They were amazed to hear about how Mary overcame so many obstacles, paying for herself to get to the Crimea so she could continue to help as many people as she could, including on the battlefield, as well as setting up her very own British Hotel. The children created timelines of significant events in healthcare during the Victorian Era, and drew observational drawings of herbs that Mary Seacole used to treat her patients. We also thought about the word ‘commemorate’, looked at the many ways in which Florence Nightingale has been recognised for her efforts, and how we could better commemorate Mary for her hard work as a pioneer in history. The children’s ideas were plentiful and they designed posters, statues, dolls, coins, hospitals and many more! This week in maths the children have had a position and direction focus, giving each other directions and turning objects using vocabulary such as ‘clockwise’ and ‘anticlockwise.’
A highlight this week was our ‘Wonderful World of Bees’ workshop down at King Henry’s Walk Garden. We love to visit our garden space as much as possible and now that the weather is set to improve into the summer term, we would like to spend much more time outdoors. The children were able to visit a real beehive, practise pollination in action through role play, and learned the more technical terms for different types of bees that exist. Don’t the children look professional in their beekeeper outfits? We were even able to try their honey, which was absolutely divine!
Our RE focus is all about Islam this term, the children learned about how Muslim people have spent the month of Ramadan fasting, and we tried some dates which is commonly chosen to break fast with. We wished eachother Eid Mubarak yesterday, and have been looking at ways and places of worship, and beginning to create geometric mosque tiles using symmetrical shapes, plants and pattern.
We are now looking forward to a restful weekend, ready for another busy week ahead.
Aisha