Another busy term draws to an end - time flies when your having fun and we have had lots of fun in Year 2! Our Eisteddfod was a success again this year with all children participating in at least 1 event. Congratulations to Llynfi who were the overall foundation phase winners on the day. Lots of new skills have been developed over the term. We took part in the RSPB big schools bird watch. We created databases and graphs, continued to develop our descriptive writing through stories and poems, had an eye for detail completing observational drawings using a range of media including oil pastels, chalk and paint and furthered our understanding of Wales, its traditions, myths, legends and our current day immediate and local environment. Miss Evans, one of the other Year 2 teachers travelled to Tanzania over the half term holidays as part of an exchange programme. When she returned we compared our country and locality to that of Tanzania and the children and schools she visited out there. We looked at lots of differences but also found many similarities!! Maes Yr Haul also celebrated its 10th birthday recently. A highlight of the week was definitley the hot air balloon. It insprired us to research facts and information on balloons. We even designed and created our own in class! All the children enjoyed the open morning, sharing their classroom, work and activities with yourselves. We finished the week off in glorious sunshine with a party outdoors. What a successful and enjoyable week. After Easter Year 2 have decided to become time travellers - where is Doctor Who when you need him?! We will look at various points in time - who, what, why, where, how... and of course let us not forget what is happening in the summer of 2012 - the OLYMPICS!! The whole school will be learning about the games, developing lots of skills along the way, learning about different aspects and of course holding our own! As part of transition and preparation for the juniors, year 2 and year 3 will compete in their own version of the olympic games. The children will be involved in the planning, organisation and running of it - we are very excited!! Happy Easter everyone, see you after the hols.

Welcome back I hope you all had an enjoyable and relaxing Christmas break. The children have returned refreshed and enthusiastic.
Our topic for the first half term is 'Wonderful Wales'. During our intial topic brain storm and 'Thinking Thursday' session the children have decided they would like to find out about famous Welsh figures - past and present, research our local area and landscape, how it has changed, what wildlife is present and also read Welsh legends - we may even create a few of our own!! We also have a busy term preparing for our Eisteddfod celebration and competitions. House meetings start soon.
January 16th - 20th is the 'Big Schools Bird Watch' Year 2 children are taking part. We are currently designing and making wooden bird boxes to put up around the school. A camera is being set up to watch one of the boxes and bird table so that we can record what is happening on a link to our smart boards. We will forward our results and findings to the RSPB at the end of the week. Lots to do and lots to learn!!

We have also been lucky enough over the past few weeks to have both visitors, shows and workshops in school, as well as going on our trip to the cinema to see Yogi Bear.

In prepartion for our visit to the cinema the children learnt a lot about Yellowstone National Park, where it is, its wildlife and of course the geysers!
We had a go at making our own geysers and guess who got soaked in the process!! Yours truly.

After watching the film we have turned film producers ourselves. We split into teams mixed with the other Y2 classes and have produced our own wildlife fact film, making scripts, costumes and using the flip cams. We also decided to look at our own local parks on Broadlands and talked about how we could make them even better. We have drawn plans, added improvements and have drafted letters to accompany our plans to send to the council, informing them of our ideas. We have all thoroughly enjoyed these activities and have developed valuable skills along the way such as how to set out a formal letter, drafting and working together allocating roles and responsibilities to complete a task, to name but a few.

We have also had a 'Brass Trio' into assembly to play for us, PC Stewart came to talk to us about being /staying safe and dangers to be aware of. He brought Tarian his friendly dragon who was hilarious and loved by all the children. XL Wales came to school aswell and we had an interactive workshop on Electrical circuits. We made circuits and switches to make the bulb light up, then built houses out of Knex to put them in. The tutor commented how well behaved the children were and how impressed she was with their effort and their teamwork. Da-iawn Blwyddyn 2 I am very proud of you!

Our trip to Bristol Zoo was fantastic. A long but very interesting and enjoyable day had by all. Thank you to all who came.

We have researched life under the ocean over the last few weeks. We thought of lots of questions such as 'What colour blood do sharks have?' 'How do electric eels sting?' and then developed our research, reading and ICT skills finding out the answers.

Welcome back to everyone. I hope you all had a good Summer holiday and are now refreshed and ready for Year 2. I can't believe the children are in Year 2 already! I remember them all well from Nursery.

We have made a good start to the term. The children are settling well as a class and are motivated and enthusiastic about our topic 'Danger Rangers'. We have discussed as a class our learning up to now and decided what new learning and skills we want to develop this term.

We want to find out about various endangered animals living in local, national and global habitats, posing questions such as 'Why are they endangered?' 'How can we help protect them?'
We want to find out about everyday dangers such as Electricity, road safety, firework code etc... We have Kerb craft coming in to help answer some of our road safety questions but to also complete with us practical strategies for safe crossing of the roads. This will hopefully start in the very near future.
During our topic and skills brainstorming session we have also discussed Maths, reading, writing and lots of other areas of learning. The children have all been involved in setting their own targets for the term and are working on these daily.

Thinking Thursdays will continue this year and we have just completed a fortnights work on 'Tigers' Lots of the ideas, activities and research decisions were made by the children and the staff have helped the children to consolidate skills and develop new ones through the activities.
The children have decided over the next couple of weeks we will be learning about underwater animals, the oceans and fishing! We are looking forward to it and will keep you posted on how its going, what we are up to and what we are finding out and learning!


Up coming events/dates to remember:

Tray and Display open evening for parents and children - 4th October 2011

INSET days - Thursday 6th & Friday 7th October 2011

Year 2 trip to Bridgend Odeon - Monday 17th October 2011

Some photos of some activities we have done this term.

This final term in nursery has been a very busy one. Colin Jackson visited the school to launch our sports week and what a week it was! Every day we participated in various activities and had lots of fun doing so. We had our wheel-a- thon, sports day, parachute games, skipping, hula hooping, football and the sack race. The staff were certainly tired at the end of the week

We have also been busy finishing off our topic 'In the Garden' by finding out about plants and growth. We have developed our mathematical skills and language by comparing tall and short sunflowers, measuring using non-standard and standard units of measure, looking at different shapes, sizes and colours of flowers and sequencing and ordering the life cycle of a plant. We have also planted flowers outside the classroom, hung our buckets we decorated as a home task up with flowers in and are now waiting for our cress heads to grow!

We were hoping to round off the year with a trip to Bryngarw park but the great british summer soon put a stop to that.
We are planning instead to have our packed lunches in school, crack open the popcorn and lemonade and settle down to a DVD on the smart board with the lights off and blinds down.

Finally I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to both the children and parents of class Roach. Myself and the other staff have really enjoyed learning with you in what has been a busy, fun and exciting year. The children have come a long way since last September and we are very proud of them! Even though I will not be their class teacher next year I look forward to seeing them in and around the school and hearing about all what they are doing and learning. Have a relaxing, happy and safe summer holidays - see you all Thursday 1st September.

So far this term we have been enjoying finding out about Minibeasts. We discussed our topic title 'In the Garden' and the children discussed what they already know, what they want to know and how we are going to find it out. Minibeasts were top of the list and so far we have been on a minibeast hunt - Mrs Morgan and Miss Ekman were not very happy when we showed them the spider we found!! He was huge!! We have used the internet and various factual books to research spiders, ladybirds, caterpillars and butterflies, completed lots of fun activities - making binoculars, collaging, number work - counting legs, sorting for size and colour of minibeasts, minibeast writing patterns, creative dance and movement - you should see our caterpillar moves!! and much, much more. Lots of the ideas we thought of in our Thinking Thursday sessions and from reading together 'The Bad Tempered Ladybird', 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and 'The Very Busy Spider'. We have developed lots of new, and practised existing skills whilst doing all this.
After Whitsun we are continuing the same topic and we have decided to continue our learning using Minibeasts as a theme, but to also learn about life cycles, plants and growth in the garden.

We have all been very busy in the nursery since the start of the Spring term. Our topic 'Wonderful World of Colour' has led us on a bright and colourful journey having lots of fun whilst learning lots of new skills. We have chosen a book with a colour focus every week and through our 'Thinking Thursday' sessions the children have had an input into the various activities going on in the nursery, leading their own learning. We have also explored colour through Wales and Welsh culture and travelled on our magic colour carpets to investigate colours of India.

There have also been lots of exciting events this term. The Eisteddfod was throughly enjoyed by all the staff and children.




World book day saw lots of sheep, butterflies, ladybirds and bees as Nursery dressed up as characters from the story 'Wooly Wendy and the Snowdon Lily' and red nose day activities arranged by our very own year 6 children raised over £500!!







More recently we've had a Maths celebration day and nursery certainly proved they have lots of number, shape, space and measure skills. It was the same number skills we used to count how many seats we needed on a bus for our trip to Jolly Jesters.
The trip was enjoyed by all - possibly a little too much by the staff and parents who braved the big red bumpy slide! I know I certainly used muscles I din't even know I had!. The children were very well behaved both on the bus and at the playcentre and were a pleasure to take out. A big thank you to all the parents and Grandparents that were able to attend. Your help was greatly appreciated




We are currently practising hard for our Easter bonnet celebration, learning lots of new songs and poems. It is sure to be an 'eggcellent' show!!

What a busy first term we have had in Nursery! September and October was settling in, making new friends and exploring our classroom and school. November and December was remembering and celebrating - Bonfire Night, Remembrance Day, Divali and of course Christmas!

Over the term we have had lots of fun getting to know each other, exploring the inside and outside environment and begun to explore lots of learning opportunities. The children have been introduced to Write Dance - developing fine & gross motor skills, creativity and music - and POPAT - our scheme used to develop reading, writing and spelling skills. P.E sessions are very much being enjoyed by all the children and I am very pleased to inform you they are all now independently taking off and putting on jumpers, cardigans, socks and shoes, hopefully their own!!


In the lead up to Christmas we were very busy practising for our concert 'The Nativity'. We all enjoyed learning and singing lots of songs. I was very impressed with the children learning their lines and performing them on stage to a packed audience 3 times! Da-iawn Meithrin.

In class we were just as busy as Santa's elves, making, creating, cutting, sticking, painting and glittering. I am sure you will all agree the childrens' decorations, cards, calendars and gift tags that they worked so hard on, are fabulous.

All of the staff are looking forward to the new year and welcoming the children back to school. Next term our topic is 'The Wonderful World of Colour' and we have lots of ideas to share with the children and are keen to get their thoughts about how and what we can learn, explore, and investigate. We will send out our termly Nursery newsletter in January letting you know how you too can help and get involved.

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!