This week in class, we played a game where our partner handed us a 2d shape, behind our backs. We had to have a feel and tell our partner how many sides; how many corners; whether the sides were straight or curved and the name of the shape. The shapes we were working with were squares, rectangles, different triangles, circles, half circles and hexagons. We can remember the name of a hexagon because it has an ‘X‘ in it’s name and it has siX sides! After that, we had a think about which 2d shapes would tile ie make a pattern when they were put together that had no gaps. We loved both these games and made awesome tiling patterns.

This week in P2 we have been working with British coins. So far, we can add up coins and count the total; we can choose the correct coins to buy something; we can do that in different ways and finally, we’ve been trying to learn to work out change. This last thing, working out change has been quite difficult for us. Mrs Cameron thinks it might be because we, ourselves, don’t really use money yet and we mostly see grown-ups using cards to pay for things in shops now.

We have compared working out change to other sums we do know how to do. We know how to work out the difference between 2 numbers and we are really good at missing number sums eg

9+_=15

Working out change is the same as these. If we have a 20p coin and we want to buy something that is 14p, we know these numbers are not the same. They are different and we need to work out the difference between them and when we do, that is the change we should get.

It’s good to use lots of different strategies to get our answers so this week we have used, ‘drawing empty number lines’; ‘counting on or counting back in our heads’ with actual money and ‘concrete items’ (towers of cubes)

With the cubes, we had a tower of 20 to represent the 20p piece and we made  other towers for the cost of the items. When we compared the towers together, we could see the difference and we knew that was the change we should get. Once we’d done that, we wrote what we had done as a sum.

In P2 this term, we are very lucky to have a fantastic music specialist visiting us every fortnight. His name is Mr Abella and he’s coming to teach us some of the basics of music in a fun way.

So far, we have had 2 visits. On the first visit, he told us all about The Beat and how it is a steady pulse that runs through music. We did lots of different activities where we kept beats of different speeds.

This week we learned about types of percussion instruments and the noise that they make. We had ‘boom’, ‘ting’, ‘shake’ and ‘tap’ noises. We were all put in a team and had to play Simon’s Said with our sound. It was lots of fun, we were all laughing and playing the game really well. In the end, the ‘ting’ team won.

Mr Abella complimented us on our amazing listening and self-control and he thought we’d learned really well again today.

In Science today, we had a think about water and how amazing it is. It looks a bit boring and it doesn’t have much of a taste but as well as keeping us alive, it does other cool things that some us hadn’t really realised before.

Water can change it’s shape to any container that it is in, when the temperature is right. When we looked at ice cubes in a container, they didn’t change shape to be like the container. When we held them in our hands, they gradually changed shape, by becoming water and they melted through our fingers. The ice is a solid and when it is water, it is a liquid. We had a kettle of water in the class when it boiled, steam came out the top. Steam is water gas. As well as learning about solids, liquids and gases, we had a talk about how you can’t tell if water is hot or cold just by looking at it, unless it is really cold or really hot. We’ll always be careful, before we get into a bath or wash our hands from the hot tap by doing a wee check first.

Next week, we’re going to design an experiment to test where in or near our class, we can make an ice cube stay as ice for the longest.