Pioneers Class

This week has been wonderful.  Everywhere is a buzz of reading,writing,thinking and doing. The elves have asked for buns and these have been made. Bob the Elf has his own swimming bag,towel and shorts. The Beebots arrived and were quickly put to good use pulling and pushing the sleigh full of elves.So much excitement was visible here and great discussion on how to combine the power of push and pull.

Our Christian Value is Perseverance and this was certainly present. The Pioneers worked as a team to attach, program and press “Go!” on the Beebots. They have all been looking closely at the gadgets and equipment we have in the classroom and they are interested to find out how things work.

One Pioneer suggested that the elves need a necklace and there was silence while they sat and threaded. This showed real perseverance. They helped each other with the knots. A lovely Pioneer made necklaces for their friends too. This shows real kindness and consideration.

Mr and Mrs Cobbler delivered a selection of clothing and the materials to make suitcases. The Pioneers worked together to dress their elves and attach handles to their cases. This was tricky and fiddly but they did not give up.

Another wonderful week of happy learning.

The Pioneers have been visited by the elves who have come to help in the Shoemaker and his wife in their shop. They are intrigued by the sewing machine and all of the tools and leather that a cobber may need.

The elves have come with letters to introduce themselves and over the next week we will ensure that their needs are met.

We are becoming familiar with the story and are using a story map for retelling.

It is great to be back.

The week began with discussions about Advent and Hannukah and lighting a candle in the darkness.

The Pioneers made wreaths together and talked about any risks involved-sharp points on the holly and cocktail sticks to hold the candles and the risk from fire. They all knew what may cause harm and worked carefully together. The odd bug escaping from the greenery caused a bit of a distraction!

We watched the wonderful ballet,The Nutcracker and talked about the dancing and the music and how this linked with the story. We then composed some sentences together to describe the beautiful Nutcracker and the Sugar Plum Fairy. We painted taking great care and paying attention to detail. They added extra once the paint was dry. The results are splendid.

The Pioneers then composed and wrote their own descriptive sentences. Every day we are reading and writing more.

We have had another wonderful week of learning in Pioneers,full of elephant poo and phonics and the number 6. All of which caused great excitement.

We have been finding out what animals need to survive and the Pioneers were all very clued up on this.Impressive.

We had watched the video of all the animals on our playground so popped outside to see if they had left any other clues. Again,the Pioneers knew what they were looking for-fur,footprints and poo.

We were astonished to find a pile of elephant poo on the cement. We needed a dustpan and brush to bring it inside but not until it had been measured and checked against Plop Trumps.

We moved on to animals closer to home and did a bit of sorting. We discussed nocturnal and diurnal and predator and prey and food chains. The Pioneers love a bit of cardboard and tape and they all made animal homes and experimented with some ambitious writing. Again,impressive stuff.We enjoyed a book called 1 Fox and the children produced some wonderful numberline story maps.

We use anything and everything to get to grips with counting. This week everything has been adding up to 6 and the Numicon Towers were great. Lots of learning took place when selecting the pieces to put on top. Was it one more or one less? What can you see?

So much wonderful Maths Chat.

Happy Learning

The Pioneers have been incredible this week and writing is happening all over the place.

We have now got to grips with sh,th,ch and ng so so may words can be constructed using the phonics we have to play around with. We read Oi Get Off Our Train and then made our own phrases with animals in or on things. We constructed,read and then wrote these and then went off and tried them on our own. The resulting writing was incredible.

We also visited our Library and this will be a weekly event. There was much excitement and learning how a library works. 

Your Pioneer may have let you know about the visitors to our playground. The zebra,elephants,rhino and giraffes were quite a shock to see.Although we didn’t see them in person,the Pioneers were very clear about the clues we should be looking for. We will be searching for clues next week…

We will keep you posted!

Last week we had a lot of chat  around the books we read by Oliver Jeffers. A question came up that was unexpected and that was,”Why don’t the penguins fall off the bottom of our planet?”

This week we have found out a little bit about the movements of the earth,the sun and the moon and day and night. The Pioneers love new words and like to say axis and equator and imaginary line.

We took a look at Google Earth and identified the land and the sea and noticed that some of the land was different colours.

We read another Oliver Jeffers book called The Way Back Home and this supplied us with wonderful words to read and play with. We made little puppets to act out the story before writing our own sentences. We talked a lot about our Christian trust and the relationship between the boy and the alien and they each would be feeling. This was outstanding.

We finished the week by answering a question from the book. The little boy was stuck on the moon and how was he to get down. The Pioneers had their own ideas involving trampolines and ropes,parachutes and bird.

The models were are a huge success.

The week has been all about Pumpkin Soup and our forest finds.

We have told and retold the story and acted it out with the toys,discussing the importance of friendship and how to sort out our differences.

We discussed our Christian Value of Trust and how we can help each other out.

In the forest we scooped out the pumpkins and collected the seed. We foraged for ingredients to cut and mix and stir.

The Pioneers were incredible when collecting and colour matching. It was quite impressive.

Back in the classroom,the Pioneers created their story maps and added lots of writing.

They can write and read so many words now. It is so good.

The Pioneers prepared for Mr Atherton’s visit by taking a look at his Green Cook Book. We got to grips with some new vocabulary-equipment,recipe and ingredients. We talked about a range of equipment and the use in our classroom-sieve,scales,garlic press and measuring cups.

The Pioneers made their own dough and talked about the ingredients they needed-yeast,oil,flour,sugar and water. They wrote a name label for their bags and popped the dough in to keep it safe for the next day.

They made a wonderful selection of Woodland Pizza for the Helpful Hedgehog.

So good.

Our school grounds are full of the most wonderful things and this week we took a closer look at the our trees and the things that fall from them. We have done a story map of Chicken Licken to retell the story together and had lots of fun searching for leaves and seeds and other things which maybe did not fall from a tree (Mini Cheddars Bag)

Thank you for all of the conkers. We do not have an appropriate tree in our forest so it is great that we are getting deliveries. Conkers are the best and are being used for many things in our Woodland Kitchen.

We are thankful for all the wonderful things our great outdoors provides.

Happy Learning

This week in collective worship the Pioneers have been thankful for friends and friendship. We have all talked about the things our Pioneer friends have done for us across the week. The Pioneers said that they have been helped by their friends to tidy up and that they have been grateful for friends who have looked after them when they have fallen over.

We have read a book about a helpful hedgehog who is a bit lonely. He is helped out by a donkey and in turn he helps the donkey too. The hedgehog gets an apple stuck on his spikes and the donkey nibbles the apple to get it off. The lonely hedgehog and the hungry donkey become friends.

We collected up our apples from our tree ready to use next week.

We are thankful for all the harvest.