Pioneers Class

The Pioneers set off to go to the Spar to buy a tree for their front door. As they turned the corner they saw before them a beautiful little tree. It had a note attached,tied in green ribbon. One Pioneer spotted something red and white on the side of the tree. On closer inspection it was found to be a hat-Santa’s Hat. The note was from Santa himself and told the children about the tree and left a message to say to look out for his hat as he had lost it. Right at that moment a man all dressed in red walked across the road. He shouted “Ho!Ho!Ho!” We also found a little piece of nibbled carrot.

Quite amazing.

The role play in the shop has been fantastic. I have heard lots of wonderful customer service conversations beginning with,”Good Afternoon Sir.How can I help you?” many scones with jam and cream have been ordered. I was corrected when I said on bread product was a croissant and told that it was actually a doughnut.

Mrs Botham brought some goodies from the real shop and these will be added to enhance our play.

The clipboards are incredibly popular with everyone filling in order forms,writing menus and ticking off lists. The play will continue and develop next week.

Please pop in to Stay and Play for a cup of tea and a very heavy pretend bread bun.

So much learning

To extend our work in our class shop,we had a visit from Mrs Botham to do some bread making with us. When I told one of the children that Mrs Botham was coming, his response was,”A real Mrs Botham?”  And she certainly was real. Everyone got stuck in and the end result was some fine,if rather dense bread buns. Each Pioneer took home a Bothams bag and two buns.

A mighty fine day.

Thank you to a real Mrs Botham for her visit.

This week we have taken a look at Google Earth and Ordnance Survey Maps and  a globe to establish where we are in the world. So many amazing questions came from looking at the globe.

“Where is the sky? “How do you know where the sea is?” Where is Mars?”

We looked at our village to see which shops we had and were very excited to find our school and to move down the road to Bothams. 

We have read some books about journeys including titles by Oliver Jeffers. This has shaped our Role Play this week. So much fun has been had sitting in a large suitcase with an umbrella.

The whole school had lots of laughs together doing a bit of exercise for Children in Need. First thing in the morning.we warmed up with some jumps and high knees and then got on to some squats and lunges. Everyone enjoyed a bit of planking. After break all the staff joined in to try some squats. It only lasted 3 minutes 44 seconds but some felt it went on a bit longer. It was really fun.

The pumpkins have been a wonderful feature of our classroom since the start of October. They continue to rot out in the garden and we watch and discuss this progress daily. The pumpkins have been lifted,stroked,sorted,written on and covered in jewels. They have been featured in stories,recipes and lists. They are so beautiful it seemed sad to cut them up but the resulting learning was fabulous. The seeds were extracted and have been saved to plant next year. The flesh was cut and examined. Some enjoyed running their fingers through the stringy bits. Others were not so sure.

Very happy learning

We have been exploring our feelings and giving names to how we feel. This has resulted in a lot of funny faces as we have experimented with expressions. Some of the Pioneers are masters of the sad face(see classroom for pictures) We took a look at one of our favourite books for a bit of veggie inspiration. The twin tomatoes have been very popular.

There may be a few of these in next weeks soup.

This week we took delivery of a beautiful blue whale to enhance our play and discussions about our world. and in particular our work around “Somebody Swallowed Stanley”. Previously we talked about Stanley in our forest and one Pioneer said,” Plastic bags don’t belong in the Forest.” Everyone agreed and we have all become more aware of our habits regarding litter. This week a Pioneer said,”Plastic bags don’t belong in the Jungle.”

When looking at our school fruit,another Pioneers said,”Bananas don’t belong in plastic bags. They belong in the bowl.” This was seconded by another voive,”Bananas belong in the bowl.We want them in the fruit bowl not in the bags.”

These are such wise words.

This week we have been working with some  glorious,beautiful seed heads  from Mrs McGill’s garden . They are beautiful structures and the Pioneers worked with delicate fingers extracting the seeds. The were almost silent as they discovered the various textures and patterns in the sunflower seed head. We looked at the beautiful book,” A Seed is Sleepy” and watched some timelapse video to complete the cycle.

We shall plant these seeds in the summer.