Pirates and their food

Pirates didn't have it easy on board ship. One of the main contributing factors was their food. With no access to refrigeration most of it was awful.

To help the children understand this we planned and outing to our local "Paradise Island" where they would get to make their very own pirate food.

To start, we made Hard Tack - pirate biscuits made from flour and water, pressed together to make biscuits, that became very hard when dried out. These were taken on board and were soon riddled with weevils!

We left them out in the sun for the week - ready to take with us on our outing on Friday.

The class was divided into 4 groups and each group given a list of ingredients that they needed to bring to make the food when we arrived at our destination. 

The 'sexy pirates' as they called themselves,
deciding who was to bring what.

Watch this space for pictures of our fantastic outing!

Little Mermaid show.

On the 22nd August we had our annual school play called the 'Little Mermaid." It was a wonderful show and my class looked fantastic.

I have to say a huge thank you to Mrs Dowlath who help decorate the girls tails. On the evening she made sure that they all looked beautiful by personally taking responsibility for their hair and make up.

The boys made fantastic electric eels! 

Pirate Maps

No pirate worth his salt is able to set sail on the high seas without being able to read a map! 
So to make sure our little pirates would not get lost at sea we taught them to read a map by using the blocks in our Red Square as the starting point. They loved using the grid to locate the various pirate items we had placed there.

Once all the children had grasped the concept we went back to class to make their own. They worked in pairs, deciding where and what should go on the map.

painting with coffee to make the maps look old.

What a success they turned out to be. Each pair then asked another pair to write down the location of the various things that they had drawn on their map.

Green Fest

Last Sunday we had our Green Fest. It was a wonderful day with so much to see and do. The grade twos were responsible for the pancake stand, and what a success it was. Thanks to all the generous parents who contributed by donating ingredients, working at our stall and of course...buying our delicious pancakes!   

                                  

The grade 2 models who took part in the fashion show.

Pirates Ahoy!

The Privateers

This term our theme is Pirates. We started off by dividing the children into three different pirate groups:- Buccaneers, Privateers and Pirates. Each group had to come up with their charter, this was where they promised to obey the rules of their 'ship'. Each group then made up a team rhyme which they chanted as they walked the plank into their ship.

The buccaneers

On Friday each child came dressed as a pirate. We were so impressed by their outfits, and most grateful to the grade 2 parents for going to so much trouble. We made portholes with our faces peeping out of them, so that our classroom really looks like a boat sailing the seven seas.

The Pirates.

Keep watching the blog for more fun filled learning experiences!

Sleepover

Aariv and his mattress that was almost as big as he was!
Thanks for the help Angelo!

To end off our fabulous theme about Pim the aardvark Gill and I organised a sleepover at school. We made our classroom into a burrow where we were to spend the night. 

Everyone was so excited and we were counting down the days. At last it arrived! Sadly the weather did not play along so at the eleventh hour we had to change our outdoor nocturnal activities to indoor ones! 

The rain did not dampen our spirits, even the thunderstorm did not frighten us as we tucked up in our warm cozy burrow!

We had lots of fun, and both Gill and I were so impressed at how well behaved everybody was. 

Aariv climbing down the burrow entrance.
The competition was to see how far you could crawl without touching
the chair.

Can you draw a termite. Each number on the dice represented a body part.

Face painting - Mikhaeel and Nikhil making cheetah faces.

Pin the tongue on the aardvark!

Snakes and ladders, the game inspired by Pims meeting with the baby python.

Sparkler fun - lighting the quills of the porcupine!

Even Mrs Sweet turned into a cheetah!

Off 'hunting' whilst there was a break in the weather.
We used glow sticks to add to the fun, thanks to Mrs Dowlath.

Termites weren't very appetising so we had hot dogs and marshmallows instead!

Delish!

Both classes settling down for a DVD on the 'big screen' before bedtime

Girls all ready for bed! Jessica was the first one asleep.

Kwando setting up his spot!

Angelo enjoying his early morning hot chocolate.

Five o'clock wake up and hot chocolate!

Most parents arrived bright and early the next day, in fact nearly everyone was gone before the rest of of the school arrived for their final day of term 2. What a lovely way to end the very long term.

Maths on the beach! 21 June

What do you do when it is the winter solstice  and you would like to introduce multiplication to your class.....you head to the beach!

It was the most perfect day when we loaded up the very excited grade two children for some fun learning! We allowed them some free time to run and play on the beach before we settled down to do some practical work.

In an attempt to explain the concept of the longest night and shortest day and the movement of the earth, we got the children make a shadow marker by burying a stick in the sand. Each group then drew around the shadow of one of their members. We came back and hour later and compared the same childs shadow. Everyone was amazed at how the shadow had moved! It was a very real example the earths rotation, which made it a bit easier for them to understand the difficult concept of the seasons.

 

 
The beach is a wonderful way to introduce grouping. The grade twos had loads of fun grouping themselves firstly and then making groups of sand balls on the beach! It did not take long for everybody to understand the concept, which made the formal application in the classroom so much easier.