Pioneers Class

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.

The Pioneers have been making shapes with Meccano,with blocks and with magnetic rods and balls and Geoboards and elastic ba They have sorted a huge number of shapes and noted and discussed the similarities and differences. They noticed that there are a variety of types of triangle and that not all four sided shapes are squares or rectangles.

They have printed with 3D shape and noticed the shapes of the faces.

The Feely Bag has been a big hit.

This week we read together the story of  Loaves and Fishes. When I said loaf,the Pioneers thought that I said love. Maybe they really understood the story! Love and Fishes.

Our story,The Red Hat continued our theme of thankfulness and those who are thankful for us. The little girl is given a red hat by her grandfather and they have lots of fun sharing time together.

We took a look at the church in our village and talked about what happens there. We spotted it from the classroom window.

We now have a prayer space with the church and the trees. This will build up over the next week.

We have pulled and yanked and heaved and dragged a selection of vegetables from their soil. The Pioneers looked over the root systems and pulled off the stems and the leaves. The spiders and woodlice ran for their lives. We read a number of books about vegetables and talked about our experiences of planting,growing,harvesting and eating.

We read different versions of the old favourite,  “The Enormous Turnip” and retold our version with a story map and puppets to help us.

It’s been a very lovely week of learning together.

Our Christian Value is Thankfulness and this week we asked,”Who is thankful that we are here?”

We revisited the story The Digger and the Flower where a kind digger saves the seeds from a flower to replant in a green space when new building happens right where it had been growing. The flower was thankful for the digger. 

The Pioneers knew that their families were thankful for them.

Our Thankful Bear whispered in my ear and everyone overheard him telling me how wonderful the Pioneers were.

Great fun and thoughtful learning.