Year 2 have continued their material testing investigations by looking at strength testing. We watched a video of a steel bar being tested (it’s called tensile testing) and talked about why testing is important to ensure buildings, structures and forms of transport are safe. We then conducted our own tests by finding out which is the strongest type of paper in the school. Tissue paper broke very easily but thin cardboard could withstand a whole kilogram.

We have just received our next set of letters from our pen pals in Spain. The children told us about the area they live in, when their birthdays are and they drew pictures of themselves. We are looking forward to sending Christmas cards to our pen pals in December. 

Year 2’s material scientists are testing lots of different materials this half term. This week we investigated how bouncy all the balls in school are (Did you know: golf ball manufacturers do exactly this kind of test!) We tested basketballs, tennis balls, cricket balls, volleyballs… (we basically emptied the PE shed) and measured how high they would bounce. We then made bar charts to show our results.

Year 2 had great fun making rockets today. After tweaking our designs we went outside to test them as we learnt about how rockets work. Ours were powered by water but we discovered that the science is not that different from real space craft.

We’ll be learning more about forces in the second half of the term.

We have had such a lovely day at the Coventry Transport Museum today. We went on a journey through time exploring how transport has changed and then explored what cars of the future might look like. We then had a lovely time exploring Victorian cycles and why bikes like the boneshaker got its name! The children’s behaviour was outstanding, well done Year 2!

2MG have been perfecting their forward rolls and, for those who can’t already, tackling cartwheels in PE. We have even put them together into routines. We’ve worked so hard that we decided to have a week of fun exploring the wall bars.

The children in year 2 have received their letters from the Spanish children today-they were very excited. We look forward to received and writing our next letters in November. 

Year 2 are currently exploring the properties of materials. In this lesson we evaluated different fabrics to see which would be best for making a waterproof tent. We also found that we could improve the waterproofness of fabrics by rubbing wax on to them. 

What lovely teamwork this afternoon 2AP!