Year 1 and 2 - House Meetings! 8th Jan 2026
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The children had a fantastic time playing winter games with their newly appointed house-captains. The children worked in teams doing word-searches and spot the differences!

DT - Soup making 12th Dec 2025
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This half term we are exploring, tasting, designing, making and evaluating soup. Here are some photos of us enjoying this unit!

The Great Fire of London Day 10th Dec 2025
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Year 2 thoroughly enjoyed their Great Fire of London Day. History off the page visited us and we learnt so much about The Great Fire of London.

House captains 25th Nov 2025
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We chose our house captains for the year using the British Value or democracy!

Firefighters 17th Nov 2025
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This week the firefighters have visited us and helped us learn how to stay as safe as possible if there is ever a fire. It is also interesting because we have been able to explore the differences between now and when The Great Fire of London happened.

Bread Making 17th Nov 2025
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We had great fun bread making with Julia in preparation for our instruction writing.

Remembrance Day 2025 16th Nov 2025
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Downside children found it interesting learning about the significance of the Poppy and took part in the 2 minute silence to mark remembrance day..

COP30 live assembly 11th Nov 2025
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We enjoyed taking part in an assembly live from Brazil. We learnt about COP30 and we were able to discuss our opinions with other schools.

Art - Vincent Van Gogh 24th Oct 2025
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We painted in the style of Vincent Van Gogh using swirls, colour mixing and small strokes.

Science - materials 24th Oct 2025
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We explored materials and tested if they were absorbent or not.

Continents and Oceans 2nd Sep 2025
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Straight back to work for Year 2 on the first day back! We explored atlases and globes to locate the world’s continents and oceans. We also had the chance to look through some amazing non-fiction books all about the ocean and the creatures that live there.

World Book day- Dress the Door 24th Mar 2025
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As part of world book day 2025 the children had to dress their classroom door linked to their favourite book or their class book. The designs were amazing and it was a tough job selecting a winner.

George's Marvellous Medicine 14th Mar 2025
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This week we have been reading George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl. We are going to write instructions for a medicine to make Grandma kind. We have been creating mixtures to help us with time phrases, adverbs and imperative verbs. We had lots of fun doing it too!

Computing buddies 12th Mar 2025
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More photos from our weekly computing club with digital leaders and year 2 children.

Safer Internet Day 2025 12th Mar 2025
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The whole school enjoyed celebrating safer internet day again this year based on the theme of scams. Our digital leaders even held assemblies.

Mental Health Week-"Our Voice Matters" 5th Mar 2025
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Quentin Blake drawing 13th Feb 2025
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This half term in Art lessons we created our own character in the style of Quentin Blake.

Year 2 Charity Bake Sale 12th Feb 2025
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As part of our RE unit, we raised money for charity by holding a bake sale for our parents and other children. We learnt that all religions can give to charity and show that they care.

RE - Caring assembly 7th Feb 2025
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We performed an assembly to our parents to show how different religions care for each other.

'Computing Buddies' - Beebots 21st Jan 2025
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This week in the digital leader's computing club, they helped the year 2 children to program bee-bots. They had competitions and attempted to program the bee-bots to move around obstacles!

'Computing buddies' - Scratch Jr 14th Jan 2025
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This week in the digital leader's computing club, they have been helping the year 2 children to program simple animations on scratch junior.

Great Fire of London Day 2024 13th Dec 2024
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Year 2 children had a fantastic Great Fire of London Day, hosted by an external company called History Off the Page. The event allowed them to reinforce their understanding of the Great Fire of London, their current history topic, through a range of enjoyable and engaging hands-on activities.

Year 2 - Burning houses 6th Dec 2024
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This week we burnt our houses that were made in the style of those from the Great Fire of London. This showed us how quickly the fire was able to spread due to the fact that the houses were extremely close together and made from flammable materials. All of this helped us with our information report writing.

Year 2 - Bread making 13th Nov 2024
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This week Chef Paul taught us how to make bread. We are going to be writing instructions in our next writing topic so it was extremely helpful to watch it being made and create our own shapes. We collected lots of lovely imperative verbs and adverbs to use so that our instructions are clear and can be followed easily.

Year 2 - Anti bullying week 4th Nov 2024
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This week Year 2 completed anti-bullying lessons based on the theme of respect. We made our own class pledge.

Year 2 Maths - WB 14th October 18th Oct 2024
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This week we have been focusing on addition and subtraction. We started by counting forwards and transferred this skill to adding on a number line. Then we moved to counting backwards and subtracting by drawing our own number lines.

Year 2 reading mornings 17th Oct 2024
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Every Thursday from 8:45 until 9:00 we open the doors to our wonderful parents so that they can hear us read. Here are some photos of us reading with our parents.

Year 2 - Open Classroom 17th Oct 2024
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This week, the whole school have enjoyed opening the classroom doors to parents. Have a look at some photos from Year 2 enjoying guiding their parents around the classroom, showing work and exploring their favourite educational apps.

Year 2 - Computing - Information Technology 11th Oct 2024
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We completed our information technology unit this week. It was based around information technology in and out of school. During the unit we learnt the definition of a computer as well as information technology (IT). We thought about the IT we used in school and where we can find IT outside of school. During this lesson, we wanted to find out the benefits of using IT so we pretended to be a till in a shop. We had to match the codes to the products and the price list then finally add the numbers together when the customer chose what they wanted. It helped us to understand that we are lucky to use IT as it can do certain jobs much more quickly and accurately than humans.

Year 2 - Art - Vincent Van Gogh 4th Oct 2024
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This week in Year 2 we started painting the background for our final piece inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's 'Starry Night'. We used wavy lines, broken lines and swirls as well as colour mixing to make different shades of blue.

Year 1 and 2 house meetings 3rd Oct 2024
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This week we voted for our house captains. This showed the British Value of Democracy as we got to vote for who we thought would do the best job for our house.

Year 2 - Music 3rd Oct 2024
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During music this half term we have been talking about pitch, tempo, rhythm and beat. Today we played the glockenspiel and talked about which notes had higher pitches and which had lower. We tried to play song at different tempos.

Year 2 - NSPCC assembly 24th Sep 2024
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We had a fantastic assembly with NSPCC in September. We learnt ways to keep ourselves safe and talked about our trusted adults at home and at school.

Year 2 - Fire service visit 17th Sep 2024
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We had a visit from the local fire service. They taught us all about how to stay safe in the event of a fire. We had fun squirting the hose too! This visit will prepare us for our history unit next half term where we will be comparing similarities and differences between the fire service now and what they had in 1666.

Downsides Future Stars Art Gallery 9th Jul 2024
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This afternoon it was time to let the art do the talking at the annual Downside Art Gallery. The quality and range of work was exceptional and once again just shows how talented Downside children are.

Year 2 & 3 sports day 30th Jun 2024
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Well done to all the Year 2 & 3 children who competed in their sports day on Thursday.

Year 2 - London Zoo 3rd Jun 2024
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We loved our trip to London Zoo. It helped us to write a wonderful recount but also taught us about animal habitats.

Geography assembly - Colombia 15th May 2024
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Year 2 learnt about Colombia as part of our Geography unit. Mrs Manning is from Colombia so she was able to tell us lots of interesting information and even show us different artefacts.

Year 2 - HSBC assembly 7th May 2024
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In Year 2 we had a visit from HSBC. They came to help us learn about money because we are learning about it in our PSHE sessions.

Year 2 - ZooLab visit 23rd Apr 2024
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We had an incredible visit from ZooLab and their amazing animals. This helped us with our science learning based around habitats.

Year 2 - DT - Moving toy 15th Apr 2024
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Year 2 made some amazing moving toys. In the design process, some of us decided to make our toy for a Reception child. We even got to go down to Reception so they could try the toys out. Have a look at the photos to see if they enjoyed them...

Year 2 - Hot Cross Buns 27th Mar 2024
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As part of our learning about Easter, we looked at different ways Christians celebrate Easter. We got to make hot cross buns with help from Chef Paul!

Year 2 - Marvellous Medicine 15th Mar 2024
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We followed instructions for a medicine to 'make The Twits clean'. This helped us understand why imperative verbs and adverbs are important when writing instructions. It also gave us vocabulary ideas to use in our own writing.

Year 2 Big Legal Lesson 13th Mar 2024
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This week we learned about the law through 'the big legal lesson'. This helped us to understand the British Value 'Rule of Law'. Here is some of our work.

Year 2 World Book Day 13th Mar 2024
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In Year 2 we celebrated World Book Day in lots of different ways. We explored new books, had a live author lesson, designed a reading den for our classrooms, created our own comics and lots more!

KS1 Computing Club 7th Mar 2024
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Our Year 1 and 2 computing club explored programming with cars and bee-bots this week. We compared the differences between them and tried to program them to enter other people's classrooms.

Year 2 Wormy Spaghetti 5th Mar 2024
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In our Literacy lessons, we are writing a character description for Mr Twit. We decided the best way to write about his behaviour was to act like him ourselves so we got messy eating our 'wormy spaghetti'.

Bake sale for Keech Hospice 1st Mar 2024
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Year 2 held a bake sale to raise money for Keech Hospice. This also linked to our RE topic of 'Caring for others'. We learnt that all religions as well as non-religious people can care for others and raise money for charity.

Year 2 Family Learning 29th Feb 2024
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It was great to see some Year 2 children working with their parents during our Family Learning sessions.

Internet Safety Day 2024 10th Feb 2024
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On the 6th of February 2024 we celebrated Safer Internet Day across the school. This is something we do annually at Downside and here are some examples of our work this year.

Year 2 Quentin Blake watercolours 10th Feb 2024
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We have been learning about Quentin Blake during our Art lessons. We have been painting with control and using different amounts of water to change the tone of the watercolours.

Year 2 caring assembly 10th Feb 2024
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In RE we have been learning about how religious and non-religious people care for each other. We performed an assembly to our parents to show how different religions show they care.

Year 2 Great Fire of London Day (Part 2) 18th Dec 2023
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On Thursday the rest of Year 2 children had the opportunity to develop their knowledge of the Great Fire of London. Watch out for the rats!!!

KS1 Christmas Lunch 18th Dec 2023
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The children in KS1 enjoyed their christmas dinner on Wednesday.

Great Fire of London Curriculum Day 18th Dec 2023
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On Wednesday (13th December) the children from Jupiter, Mars and some from Saturn class had a fun and interactive day working with History of the Page to develop their understanding of the Great Fire of London.

All the children were treated to watch the annual pantomime (Oh Yes they were!!) 12th Dec 2023
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There was lots of fun, laughter and shouting whilst the children `Peter Pan Never Grow Up` on Thursday 7th December. Unlike the panto the photos are below- not behind you!!

Short Tail Trail 2024 12th Dec 2023
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We are delighted to working with Keech Hospice to bring alive the Short Tail Trail. Follow the website as we update you on the progress.

Food Bank Donations 12th Dec 2023
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Thankyou to all our amazing families who donated food to the food bank last Friday (8/12/23) we had more food donated than every. What a fantastic and generous community we are.

Year 2: Great Fire of London 12th Dec 2023
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As part of their Great Fire of London Topic the children made Tudor houses and then got to experience how they stopped the fire.

Year 2 Firefighter Come to visit 12th Dec 2023
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As part of their topic on the Great Fire of London the Year 2 children were visited by the Luton Fireservice.

Year 2 Bread Making 12th Dec 2023
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Year 2 had a fantastic day making bread at school.