This week in geography, our Year 2s tackled a big concept: how we fit into the wider world. We started by recapping the four countries of the UK—and their capital cities—before narrowing our focus right down to our home city of Leeds.

While looking at a map of the UK, one student raised a brilliant question: “Why does Leeds look so tiny on the map when it’s actually huge?”

It was the perfect moment to talk about scale. To help them visualize it, we pulled out a whole range of maps, from massive wall maps down to detailed local street guides. The real lightbulb moment came when we pulled up digital maps on the screen. The children watched in awe as we zoomed out to see the entire UK, then zoomed right in until we could spot familiar streets, landmarks, and even the outline of our school grounds.

Watching their eyes light up as they realized how maps represent real-world spaces was fantastic. Questions like that show they aren’t just memorizing facts—they’re truly beginning to think like young geographers.

There’s always a lovely hum during our Year 2 reading for pleasure sessions, but this week took an unexpected turn.

Instead of grabbing the usual storybooks, a few children wandered over to the shelf and picked out atlases entirely on their own. Before long, small groups were huddled together over maps, tracing coastlines and pointing out countries. They were genuinely fascinated, sharing what they had found with each other.

As the geography teacher, I couldn’t help but feel a massive sense of pride. You spend so much time planning lessons to spark that spark of curiosity, but seeing seven-year-olds dive into the world map just because they wanted to is about as good as it gets.

It was a brilliant reminder that kids are natural explorers. Sometimes you just have to put the right books out and watch their imagination take off.

This week, Year 2 gathered in the main hall for a very special event: our Year 2 Booknic! The hall was transformed into a reading haven, complete with mats and piles of wonderful stories.

The children brought along their favorite books and spent a delightful afternoon diving into fantastic adventures and sharing tales with friends. It was wonderful to see the hall filled with quiet giggles, shared smiles, and captivated young readers.

Reading is at the heart of everything we do in Year 2. Events like our Booknic remind us that reading is not just an essential skill for learning, but a lifelong source of joy and imagination. Opening a book builds empathy, expands vocabulary, and lets children explore brand-new worlds.

Thank you to everyone who helped make our Booknic such a joyful success!

Welcome back to a brand-new school year! Our Year 2 classroom has been buzzing with excitement all week as the children have settled brilliantly into their new routines. It has been wonderful to see so many smiling faces, reconnecting with old friends and warmly welcoming new ones.

The children have worked so hard to learn our new class expectations, showing super listening skills and fantastic teamwork from day one. To celebrate such a successful first week, we headed outside into the hall for some fun group ball games! As you can see in the photos below, everyone had a brilliant time practising their throwing, catching, and passing skills while cheering each other on.

We are so proud of how mature and enthusiastic our new Year 2s have been this week. Thank you for all your support at home—it is going to be a fantastic year!

This week, the children investigated the elasticity of different objects and how they respond differently to the same pressures. We tested a variety of materials including stretchy socks, elastic bands, springs and also rubber gloves.

Part of how we tested their elasticity was to stretch them via blowing them up and watch them return to their shape. This was quite obviously entertaining for the children as you can see from their photos!

Our trip to Lotherton Hall last week was absolutely spectacular. It was a wonderful sunny day when we arrived and the children had a workshop in the main manor house with Florence Nightingale. She told us about her life and then had us complete some activities, healing a teddy bear like a nurse and looking at Victorian objects from her lifetime. Then we went for our break and explored the grounds until we finally arrived at the animal house. We saw many tropical birds including flamingos and penguins!

This week after a lot going on (Sports Day, tests) we finally arrived at our next Maths topic. Position and direction. The children whizzed through the lesson and looked at word that cover position and direction to help them make a real life structure accurately from instructions – which they all achieved!

Take a look at the photos and you will see lots of successful mathematicians.

This last week we have been practicing our Maths more and more in our ‘Math Gym’ (10 min arithmetic session every day). The children have been working on what they find challenging, going through this until it starts to click more and then move onto the next challenge. I can honestly say as their teacher that they have worked astoundingly hard on this and I am really proud of the effort that some of the children have put into this. Here you can see us working on some problems on the board ready for tests next week.

In our PSHE lesson this week, we were studying how we can work together around challenging tasks and communicate effectively in order to achieve a shared goal. As you can imagine, this can be quite a difficult task to do, especially for children between 6 and 7. The task was to create the largest tower they could with only 6 sheets of paper, a glue stick and no help from the teacher – only from their group. However, the children performed excellently. Some groups collaborated really well, some faced some challenges and this was then discussed after to show how important group communication and feeling heard is. The photos do the children all the justice they deserve, particularly one group which created the greatest tower possible. Well done!

Recently, we have been exploring our school and its grounds. Covering National Curriculum objectives and being even more ambitious to give them mapping, navigation and fieldwork experience! The children have really gotten into this including this lesson where we were outside.

On the way to the library, we really focused on our local area and mapped it out. This included human features like the Lingfield Mosque, bus stops and houses as well as physical features like trees, a field and the flower beds. It showed that the children area getting a better concept of their position and place in the world around them and its relation to them in size and distance.