Pippin Class Blog
EYFS
Term 6
Weeks 3 and 4 Room on the Broom
For this book, we have really enjoyed making our own wands and then making up spells. We have dressed up and played at being witches but, so far, no-one has actually been turned into a frog!
We have also been using our programming skills in making the Beebots move around our classroom.
Pippin 2025-2026 Room on the Broom
Weeks 1 and 2 Ten things I can do to help my world
Over the last two weeks, we have been learning about ways in which we can look after our environment. A key theme has been the importance of recycling and we have introduced a new recycling system in our classroom. We have made posters to remind the rest of the school about how they can help and our ideas have included turning off lights, turning taps off, turning the television off when we're not in the room, using both sides of the paper and walking when we can instead of going in the car.
Pippin 2025-2026 Ten things I can do to help my World
Term 5
Weeks 5 and 6 The Very Hungry Caterpillar
We can confirm that our caterpillars are very hungry! We have been looking after five real live hungry caterpillars that are living in our classroom so we can watch them grow. We were very excited to come in after the weekend to see how much they had grown and they have now made their own chrysalis and we are waiting to see what happens next! We have been learning about the lifecycle of a butterfly, so we are expecting some butterflies to emerge very soon!
We have been undertaking a variety of art and craft activities. We made our own models of caterpillars using junk modelling materials. We have also made a representation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar using finger painting.
Pippin 2025-2026 The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Weeks 3 and 4 The Tiny Seed
Our new book, The Tiny Seed, has already inspired us in Drawing Club where we have drawn some magical gardens where wonderful things happen. We have written some amazing sentence codes to make the magic work, using our phonics to sound out each word or using our tricky word wall to find and copy the word we need.
We have also begun some flower collages which will look beautiful when they are complete.
Planting seeds was fun. We must make sure we remember to water them each day and wait for the shoots to start spouting up. We were surprised to find that this did not happen overnight!
We have created some beautiful tiles by pressing wild flowers into clay and done some very careful observational drawings.
We have also been rehearsing our dances for May Day which are really coming on!
Pippin 2025-2026 The Tiny Seed
Weeks 1 and 2 Each Peach Pear Plum
We have begun the new term by spotting all the fairy story and nursery rhyme characters within our new book, Each Peach Pear Plum. Some were already known to us but some we have needed to find out about. Tom Thumb is a character that most of us had not heard of before, as was Mother Hubbard, so we have had fun spending time listening to stories and rhymes that we have not heard before.
We have talked about and looked at some items that we find in our homes today and the equivalent items from times past.
In maths, we have been looking at teen numbers: how to create and write them.
Pippin 2025-2026 Each Peach Pear Plum
Term 4
Week 5 Easter
As we approach the end of term, we are spending this week thinking about Easter. We began by listening to The Easter Story and talking about the significance of The Cross to Christians. We used a variety of materials to make our own representations of The Cross.
We have talked about the way Christians celebrate Easter at home. Many of us go to church, exchange Easter cards, have celebratory lunches, eat hot cross buns and go on Easter egg hunts! We have made our own Easter cards in school to give to our families.
We have given some consideration as to why we exchange chocolate eggs at Easter time and learned that the egg represents 'new life', which directly links to The Easter Story. We talked about the life cycle of a hen and sequenced pictures, cutting them out and sticking them in the correct order. We have thought about other things that represent new life, one of which is Spring flowers. We have done some still life drawings of a daffodil.
After attending our school Easter Service in the church, we found that the Easter Bunny had decided to visit! We had a fun time searching for the chocolate eggs she had hidden for us and then waved her off across the fields.
We have also made some delicious chocolate nests and our own bunny ears!
Pippin 2025-2026 Easter
Weeks 3 and 4 Holi
We began this topic by going on a walk around Ilmington and noticing how the environment is changing as a result of the arrival of Spring. We noticed leaf buds on hedges and trees, blossom, daffodils, primroses and lambs in the fields. We talked about why we can see all these changes in the world around us. This lead us to begin to think about the Hindu festival of Holi. We learned that this is a festival that celebrates colours, love and Spring time.
We watched a number of video clips to learn about the ways in which Hindus celebrate Holi. We then undertook our own interpretation of the festivities by throwing coloured paint at oversized pieces paper, rather than at each other!
In Drawing Club we suggested what might have happened to the Evil King after he sent Prahlad into the fire. There were many suggestions but the majority were in favour of the Evil King being locked away forever!
We rounded our learning about Holi off with some delicious mango lassi which was quite refreshing after PE!
During this week we have also taken part in some lovely Easter crafts with a range of our adults from home. We made some beautiful Easter baskets, daffodils and hanging egg decorations. We all really enjoyed having our parents and grandparents come to our classroom to have some creative fun with us.
Pippin 2025-2026 Holi
Weeks 1 and 2 Mr Wolf's Pancakes
We have come back to school this week having had an enjoyable week at home and many of us enjoyed eating pancakes last week on 'Pancake Day'! We have been learning about why this day is important to Christians and why it is also known as 'Shrove Tuesday'. We began the week by taking part in pancake races - it turns out that running and flipping pancakes at the same time is harder than it looks!
We moved on to thinking about what toppings we like on our pancakes and got creative by making collages of our favourite pancake toppings.
This week we have really enjoyed working with the rest of the school during World Book Day. We spent the whole day dressed as our favourite book characters joining in with different activities based on the same book - Here We Are: Notes for living on planet earth. It was great fun going to different areas around the school and working with different adults.
Pippin 2025-2026 Mr Wolfs Pancakes
Term 3
Weeks 5 and 6 Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year is a really fun thing to learn about. The story about the Great Race has inspired us to make up our own races and also draw racing tracks during Drawing Club. We have made some beautiful lanterns and learned why the colour red is so important in the celebrations. The story about the Nian made us use our imagination as the story is told rather than read from a book with pictures. We had some great ideas about what the Nian actually looks like!
We had great fun acting out the story of the Great Race with puppets and instruments during Calypso music and we really enjoyed tasting some Chinese food. Some of us even really liked the sweet chilli sauce!
Pippin 2025-2026 Chinese New Year
Weeks 3 and 4 The Gingerbread Man
This week has begun with watching a great performance of Ali Baba by the junior children. We were treated to an amazing dress rehearsal!
We have also done the third of our Trailblazer hikes on a wet and windy afternoon. There was lots of oozy mud to trudge through and we had the company of Bramley Class which was lovely.
What a fun time the gingerbread men have had in our class this week! We made a big batch to help us with our problem solving. The problem was that the Gingerbread Man needed to get across the river (bowl of water in our classroom) but there wasn't a fox to help him - not that he would have wanted the fox to help him anyway! We made boats and bridges from all sorts of materials to help him to get across without getting wet. We even tried throwing him across! Some of the gingerbread men managed not to get their feet wet whereas others ended up in a soggy heap. The poor few that got thrown manage to miss their cushion landing and broke a few limbs! We learned a lot about adapting plans as we were implementing them!
Pippin 2025-2026 The Gingerbread Man
Weeks 1 and 2 Supertato
We have come back to school feeling refreshed and ready for the busy term ahead! A wintery scene awaited us on our return to Pippin Class and we've enjoyed playing in the snow and ice, observing what happened to the ice as the day went on.
We are continuing to undertake activities that strengthen the muscles in our hands and have particularly focused on using scissors.
We have really enjoyed creating our own vegetable superheroes and deciding what superpowers they have!
We also had a very interesting afternoon when we found that Evil Pea had visited our classroom and kidnapped all our vegetables! A bit of investigating and problem solving later found all our vegetables back safe in the bowl. We then thought about how the Evil Pea might have got into our classroom and how we could stop him in the future. Some interesting contraptions were built to trap evil Pea and our message to take home is that it's important to eat all your peas before they escape from the freezer!
This week we managed to find a way to stop Evil Pea from doing anything naughty ever again - we made him and his friends into Evil Pea soup. Some of us enjoyed eating it while others were happy just to smell it!
Pippin 2025-2026 Supertato
Term 2
Week 7 Christmas
The week has begun very festively with Christmas Jumper Day and our delicious Christmas Dinner. We all enjoyed eating with the rest of the school and pulling crackers at the table.
We completed our second trailblazer hike looking for all things Christmassy! We saw some lovely trees, lights and decorations around the village.
Pippin 2025-2026 Christmas
Weeks 5 and 6 Stickman
As we move into December, our focus is turning towards Christmas and our current text is Stickman! We have been talking about the characters in the story and what Father Christmas might be doing in the lead up to Christmas.
We have been learning about The Nativity Story and practising for our play, which we are looking forward to performing on the stage in church.
We all loved having our adults come into Pippin Class to get covered in glitter while creating the most beautiful Christmas Crafts with us! Thank you to the parents, grandparents and siblings that were able to join us. Our sparkly decorations are now on our tree and will come home at the end of term.
We are all so proud of ourselves for our parts in Knock Knock Nativity. We did a great job playing our parts and singing the songs.
We are now very much in the Christmas spirit and have enjoyed playing Christmas maths games.
Pippin 2025-2026 Stickman
Weeks 3 and 4 The Three Little Pigs
We have made a great start to our activities for our new text, The Three Little Pigs. There are bits of straw, sticks and bricks everywhere!
We have really enjoyed making some quite intricate houses for the pigs and then testing them out by trying to blow them down, just like the Big Bad Wolf. Some of our constructions have held up and would definitely be strong enough to house the pigs.
Music with Mrs Roberts this week was very involved. We retold the story using a range of instruments including some that we had not used before. We now know that a triangle won't make the correct sound if it is held still in our hands.
We have also learned a little about wolves and discovered that they are not all big and bad but that they are actually strong, graceful and clever.
Our trip to the theatre to see The Tiger Who Came to Tea was fantastic. We al really enjoyed the show as well as the coach journey there and back!
Pippin 2025-2026 The Three Little Pigs
Weeks 1 and 2 Diwali
For the next two weeks, much of our learning is centred on the Hindu festival of Diwali, whilst also learning about Autumn time and other celebrations/ commemorations associated with this time of year including Remembrance Day and Bonfire Night.
We began this topic by talking about Autumn and identifying features of the local environment that are evident at this time of year. Many of us brought in things we had found on our Autumn walks and we undertook a whole-class 'show and tell' to share what we had collected. We also talked about our experiences of Bonfire Night and fireworks and painted some fantastic fireworks pictures.
We have learned about how Hindus celebrate the Diwali festival, with a focus on the Rama and Sita story in our literacy lesson. We have use modelling clay to make our own Diva lamps. We have also made sweets to share with our friends.
Our maths focus this week has been 2D shape. We have looked at Kandinsky's Concentric Circles and enjoyed producing our own versions.
We participated in the act of Remembrance at the village War Memorial before returning to school to learn about the significance of 11th November. We created our own pictures of poppies and watched this short thought-provoking animation https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04p4zsl/poppies.
Making edible sparklers was a highlight at the end of the week as was enjoying the film Inside Out!
Pippin 2025-2026 Diwali
Term 1
Week 7 and 8 Gigantic Turnip
We have spent the first half of this week undertaking a Bikeability course, learning essential skills on how to begin cycling. We learned how to check out bikes before using them, the correct way to get on and the right way to handle our bikes safely. The specialist teacher who led the course was very impressed with the progress that was made in a relatively short period of time. By the end of the two days the children were pushing themselves off, gliding and steering around cones with confidence.
We have made our very own vegetable soup using some vegetables that grow under the ground like a turnip! We carefully used peelers and knives to prepare the vegetables before it got cooked for us. When we tasted our soup, some of us really enjoyed it while some of us didn't like it so much! We recorded our soup recipe using pictures and initial sounds.
We have also told the story using a range of instruments.
One of our favourite things to do this week has been using hammers to nail golf tees into pumpkins! We have been working the muscles in our hands very hard and developing our fine motor control .
We all brought a pumpkin or gourd into school at the beginning of the week and we have been looking at them closely to compare their colours, shapes and sizes. We have done some wonderful paintings of them.
We went on our first Trailblazer hike this week. We looked signs of autumn as we walked over the fields and said hello to the sheep!
Pippin 2025-2026 The Gigantic Turnip
Week 5 and 6 We're Going On A Bear Hunt
This week, we have been reading We're Going On A Bear Hunt. We began the week by getting our wellies on and going on an adventure around the village in search of The Bear! We went through 'swishy swashy' grass, up banks, through the 'forest' and along the stream...until we came across our bear hiding in the leaves in Berry Fields!
We have had fun creating our own bears using collage and we have shared books about bears.
National Poetry Day was exciting. We worked with the older children to make up our own poems and then create art work to depict them.
We have drawn our own maps of the journey the family took to find the bear.
We compared the story 'We're Going On A Lion Hunt' to the bear hunt story and created collages to represent theses stories using mud to paint with and natural materials, such as grass, that we found outside.
We have also loved performing the story using a range of instruments and props.
We have learned lots about Road Safety today with the help of Louise and Warwick Bear. They taught us the Road Safety Code and gave us a book and a bear reflector to take home. Fred Bear, Warwick's cousin, will start coming home with us to help us to teach our families about road safety too.
Pippin 2025-2026 We're Going On A Bear Hunt
Weeks 3 and 4 The Little Red Hen
This week our learning is based on the story of The Little Red Hen. We are focusing on developing our fine motor control, having a go at painting with feathers and practising using scissors, alongside other activities. We have been working hard in phonics lessons and have begun to undertake Write Dance. We pretended to be volcanoes, moving our bodies in different ways to music, mark making on large pieces of paper.
We enjoyed our PE lesson this week. We played a traffic light game to help us to learn to stop when we needed to. We also played a game called Tidy Your Room which helped us to practise the skill of rolling a ball.
This week we made bread, just like the Little Red Hen, except we all had some help from our friends. We followed a simple recipe to mix the dough and roll into a ball shape. We then cooked our bread and ate it!
We had fun making chickens out of pine cones and retelling the story using puppets and musical instruments.
Pippin 2025-2026 The Little Red Hen
Week 2 All About Me
We have really enjoyed coming back into school this week and making the most of our lovely indoor and outdoor classrooms. We have been learning how to keep our classroom tidy and are getting better and better at tidying up! One of our focused tasks for this week has been to paint a self-portrait. We looked closely at ourselves in a mirror and talked about all the features we could see before we started painting.
On Friday, we had a visit from Sue and Harold. We loved meeting them both and learning about how we should look after ourselves. Check out our Instagram post here.
Pippin 2025-2026 All About Me
Week 1 Starting School
What a lovely first week we have had! It has been a steep learning curve for everyone. We have made new friends and got to know the adults who work with us. We have discovered new toys and learning opportunities. We are beginning to understand how Pippin Class works.
Pippin 2025-2026 Starting School
