We started Year 2 with reading a story called "Our Class is a Family!" 

We made our class charter based around being a family and how we need to behave in school. 

We made our very own friendship bracelets using our school core values. Each colour linked to a value and we come up with a word that described our class family. 

Year 1 and 2 came together to look at the curiosity box, that allowed us to come up with ideas of what our new topic would be about. We looked at the items in the box... old photographs, a clock and a map. Some of the children identified that the photographs were of our school....

We looked at maps of our area, Blaenymaes, over the years.. 1898 (125 years ago) 1916 (107 years ago) 1962 (61 years ago) and 2023.

We found out that years ago there was only fields and one road, there weren't any houses until they were built in the last 70 years. Our community has changed a lot over the years.

We found out that Blaenymaes Primary School was opened in May 1960...63 years ago. We looked at the official documents, photographs and map to work out how Blaenymaes has changed since it opened. We thought of some questions that we wanted to find out about the school years ago. Mrs Thomas is in the office came to the school when she was a little girl and will be joining us next week in class to answer our questions. 

Mrs Thomas came to our class to talk to us about what school was like when she was a little girl. She came to Blaenymaes Primary School when she was a little girl.

We asked Mrs Thomas lots of questions that we thought about last week and even some new ones when she was talking to us. 

We learnt so much about how things have changed since Mrs Thomas was in school.

We went to Swansea Museum to meet Mrs Mahoney. She told us her story of living in the cellar of the museum with her husband and children. Mr Francis, the manager of the museum accused Mr Mahoney of stealing money, so now they have to move. Mr Mahoney showed us different objects that she would use in the house during the Victorian era, 1850's. 

We learnt lots from Mrs Mahoney.  

Our Visit to Saint Fagans. 

We went back in time to a Welsh village, we saw old shops, houses and got to visit an old school. We learnt what school was like for children aged 5-14 during the Victorian era. We were told that children didn't use pencils but chalk and ink.

If they spoke Welsh then they would have been given the Welsh Not as punishment. 

Children were not allowed to write with their left hand and if they were left handed, they would have punishment. 

Shwmae Day

Dirwinod Shwmae Su'mae. 

 We celebrated Shwmae Day by creating a Shwmae picture. We drew lots of pictures associated with Wales. 

We also played Welsh games and practised our Welsh in class. 

Our classroom become a Victorian class for the morning. We experienced what school was like, we entered our classroom and had to look in the mirror to see if we were clean, we sat in rows, boys on one side and the girls on the other. Cleo read us the class rules and we weren't allowed to talk unless we were spoken to.

 We used sand trays and chalk to practise our writing. The girls learnt how to sew and the boys learnt their times tables. 

Spooky Day

We had a lovely day enjoying Spooky Day. We followed a recipe to make pumpkin cakes, once we baked them we could decorate them.

We made decorations by following a set of instructions. 

We had a pumpkin carving competition and our class won!