Pippin Class Blog

EYFS & Year 1

Term 6

Week 5 Supertato

We have had a fun but busy week! Our week began by taking part in Fieldwork Fortnight when we went to the shop to find out what items are sold there.

On Thursday we discovered some 'escapeas' in our classroom. We spent the afternoon capturing them in many different ways, really using our problem solving skills. We also made some rather delicious Evil Pea soup!

On Friday, three of our butterflies appeared from their cocoons which was very exciting.

Pippin 2023-2024 Supertato

 

Weeks 3 and 4 Two higgeldy, piggeldy weeks!

Well, what a busy week! On Monday, we went on a fantastic trip to the Cotswold Wildlife Park where we saw so many different animals and looked at the habitats that they live in.

Tuesday was full of pre-sports day events such as the long distance run, as well as a dress rehearsal for the sack race!

We very much enjoyed our sports day on Wednesday where we all did our best in all of the races and cheered on the other children in our houses.

Thursday was pyjama day, raising money for the house charities. We loved playing together in our pyjamas but it did mean we couldn't concentrate very well! However, we did begin to practise our class assembly that we can't wait to show you next week.

On the final day of week, year 1 joined Bramley year 1 and 2 to create a bug hotel in order to earn their Ilmington 11 Eco Warrior badge.

Our higgeldy, piggedly weeks continued with our class assembly on Wednesday. We hope you were able to come and watch us present our learning throughout the year so far. We really enjoyed it!

We've done lots of learning about mapping this week and particularly enjoyed creating our own obstacle course plans. We used our plans to create and test our obstacle courses. 

Pippin 2023-2024 A Higgeldy Piggeldy week!

  

Weeks 1 and 2 The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Our first week back has been full of fun learning about butterflies and caterpillars. We have been very creative and made caterpillars and butterflies using a variety of media. Our observational drawings were done with great detail. 

We have also looked at what is contained inside our body and the year 1 have made a fantastic life sized labelled diagram!

This week the reception children have achieved their Ilmington 11 Trail Blazer badge! Our final hike was the sponsored walk on Tuesday when we led the rest of the school up to Foxcote and back.

We enjoyed making some very delicious caterpillar cakes which looked amazing!

Pippin 2023-2024 The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 

Term 5

Weeks 5 and 6 Seed to Sunflower

This week has been full of learning about sunflowers. We have looked very carefully at sunflowers and created some beautiful observational paintings using a range of tools. We have also independently written some sentences about sunflowers demonstrating our phonic knowledge  in spelling unknown words as well as how we know sentences are written (capital letters, full stops and finger spaces).

The reception children have been concentrating on 2D shape during our maths lessons. They have manipulated shapes to make shape pictures and have folded paper shapes to show other shapes they are made from. Year 1 have been learning about subtraction and how we can use part whole model, loose parts and number lines to help us.

Friday gave us some lovely weather to complete the fifth of our Trail Blazer hikes, during which we spotted a range of different habitats and talked about the animals and plants that may live there. We were extremely proud of ourselves to reach the very top of the hill!

We have shown what great role models we can be during the new intake stay and play. We all demonstrated great friendship values and made sure our new children were well looked after during the afternoon. 

We learned a little about one of the British Values, Democracy, this week when we voted for our May Monarch. It was nice to know that we all had a say in who would be chosen to lead our May Day celebrations. We can't wait to show you our fantastic dances!

Pippin 2023-2024 Seed to Sunflower

Weeks 3 and 4 Amelia Earhart

This week we have begun learning about Amelia Earhart. We have written some sentences about who she was and what she did. We have also made a huge variety of planes from just about everything in the classroom!

Friday afternoon was such a beautiful day that some of got out the magnifying glasses and went for an impromptu bug hunt while others made the most of the tallest resources in our outdoor area to stand on and fly our planes.

We continued our learning about Amelia and planes in general. We have all really enjoyed this particular book and the learning we have done to go with it!

This week has also been a busy one as we are slowly getting to grips with the moves to our May Day dances. We can't wait to perform for you on May Day!

Pippin 2023-2024 Amelia Earhart

  

Weeks 1 and 2 Rescuing Titanic

We began the summer term with a new book - Rescuing Titanic. We have already learned that the Titanic was a very large ship which was going to sail to America but hit an iceberg and sank! We have come up with lots of questions that we would like to answer in our learning, such as 'Why did the Titanic have lots of rooms?' and 'How many people were on the Titanic?'. 

This week we took a short walk to spot the different habitats around our local area. We talked about the animals and plants we might find there as well as talking about why some animals would not be able to survive in habitats not suited to them.

Friday was a beautiful day and we made the most of the weather by taking our learning outside!

The second week has been full of learning about the Titanic. We have built some amazing ships of our own and have attempted to float them!

Our maths has been all about teen numbers, which we have made in a variety of ways, and number lines to twenty. We all love watching the Number Blocks which are helping us to learn about teen numbers. Click here to watch them at home.

We have produced some amazing writing using our phonic knowledge to segment the words we are writing and we have made up our own song about the Titanic!

Pippin 2023-2024 Rescuing Titanic

 

Term 4

Week 5 Easter

We had a fun filled last week of term with lots of Easter activities as well as our church service. We really enjoyed making Easter nests and meeting the Easter Bunny who hid eggs for us around the playground!

 

Week 4 Ten things I can do to help my world

Yet another busy week in Pippin. We have been learning about lots of things we can do to help to look after our planet and have come up with some very interesting inventions!

We have had a visit from Louise who is part of the Warwickshire Road Safety team. She brought with her a life size Warwick Bear (a cousin of Fred!) who will be making appearances around the school and also gave us some story books to take home. We are very good at remembering the safe ways to cross the road.

We were very excited to invite our adults in for some Easter craft. There were plenty of sequins and glue spread around the classroom and everyone had a great time making things together.

The last day of the week was a fun day as we have dressed in red or as a superhero - a particularly popular theme in our class! We also invited our families in for a second time - this time to look at all our hard work.

Pippin 2023-2024 Ten things I can do to help my world

  

Week 3 Granny came here on the Empire Windrush

This week seems to have flown by. We began with World Book Day on Monday. We split into groups with bear names and did a range of activities all around the school. It was a very busy but fun day.

We have done some fantastic maths this week. The year one having finished their addition and subtraction unit and the reception working on the composition of numbers up to ten.

We have also been comparing our own country with the Caribbean. We have looked at the different homes and different fruits that grow in each place.

Pippin 2023-2024 Granny came here on the Empire Windrush

  

Week 2 Mr Wolf's Pancakes

We have had a lovely week looking at Mr Wolf's Pancakes. It was such fun having a go at flipping pancakes and trying not to let them fall on the floor. We all really enjoyed racing against each other in the hall.

We also had a walk around the village to try to spot all the new signs of spring that are starting to emerge!

Pippin 2023-2024 Mr Wolf's Pancakes

  

Week 1 Chinese New Year

We have had such a full first week back at school. We have learned so much about Chinese New Year and the stories that go with it. 

We read the story of how the years got their animal names and then used stick puppets to retell the story. This year is the year of the dragon which is a particularly lucky year to be born in. We also listened to the story of the Nian who inspired some of the traditional ways of celebrating the New Year. Following that we created our own red decorations - lanterns and firecrakers.

We tried some Chinese noodles and some prawn crackers with some sweet chilli sauce. Some of us loved the sauce but some of us weren't so sure!

We made some amazing dragons, tried hard to use chopsticks and attempted some Chinese writing.

We will take home our red envelopes at the end of the week and we understand that it is considered rude to open them in front of the people who give them to us, even though we know there will be money inside!

Pippin 2023-2024 Chinese New Year

 

Term 3

Week 5 The Three Little Pigs

The last week of term has been so busy in Pippin Class! We have retold the story of the Three Little Pigs in various ways, including using story maps and stick puppets. The year 1 children put on a fabulous show for the reception children where they were very expressive and used some great story language.

Our science this week was an investigation into the best material to use for a pair of curtains for the brick house. The pigs had been so busy building such a sturdy house they hadn't had the time to hang something to block out the light! We tested a variety of materials by using a 'house' and a torch. Our conclusion was that thick, dark fabric would make the best curtains.

There has been a lot of huffing and puffing going on around the art table. Not only have we used straws to blow paint around the paper, but we have also had fun blowing coloured bubbles.

Pippin 2023-2024 The Three Little Pigs

  

Weeks 3 and 4 The Snail and the Whale

We have begun working on a new text this week and have enjoyed creating wave paintings to surround our display board. We have listened to the interesting sounds of whales underwater and have attempted to make similar sounds ourselves! 

On Thursday we met Gary who is an African Land Snail. He is a lot larger than the sea snail in our story and he lives in a very different environment. We discovered that he doesn't really like the cold but he was happy to come out to say hello to us while in our warm classroom.

We have all been working very hard on our writing to help us retell the story and have also collaboratively created a giant story map to help us remember all of the parts of the story.

Pippin 2023-2024 The Snail and the Whale

  

Weeks 1 and 2 The Gingerbread Man

Happy New Year!

What a start to the third term we have had. Not only have we begun our new text, The Gingerbread Man and identified lots of learning that we want to challenge ourselves with, but we have also started on a new phase in our phonics learning.

Reception have worked hard on our maths, playing some games using numbers while year 1 learned different ways to represent a group of objects.

At the beginning of the week, we had some fun exploring the ice we found in our outdoor area. Even though it was cold, we enjoyed experimenting with how the ice broke up and melted back into water.

Thursday was begun with a great assembly from Helen who talked to us about computers and then followed by investigating how 'Edison' the floor robot moved around. 

We ended the week with a fantastic trip to the theatre where we watched Cinderella. It was a long day but we all enjoyed the trip!

During our second week of working on the Gingerbread Man, we have done some amazing writing! Year 1 completed a whole storyboard while the reception wrote what the characters say throughout the story.

Out science this week has been based around the ice that had formed in our outdoor area. We thought of some quite inventive ways to trying to get it to melt and had fun conducting our experiments.

Pippin Class celebration assembly ended our week and we now have two new star students, Joseph and Alicia. They take the place of Beatrice and Seamus who both showed us all some writing that they were particularly proud of.

Pippin 2023-2024 The Gingerbread Man

  

Term 2

Week 7

Our final week has been full of fun and festivities!

We made cards for our families at the beginning of the week as well as decorating the Christmas tree in the village church. The reception children have gained their Church Mice Ilmington 11 badge for this!

Towards the end of the week, we took part in the whole school Carol Service in St Mary's. We also enjoyed making some Rudolph gingerbread biscuits and played some great party games. Our favourite was Find Mr Sprout. He hid in some interesting places and was tricky to find!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Pippin 2023-2024 Christmas

  

Weeks 5 and 6 Stickman

This week has been an incredibly busy week! We started off by performing a dress rehearsal on Monday when the junior children were very impressed with our Nativity. Tuesday was our first performance to our families and was a great success. On Wednesday we had a pretty 'normal' day of learning while Thursday brought the reception families into our classroom to get covered in glue, glitter and paint! Our fantastic Christmas craft is now decorating our classroom until we get to take it home. Friday was our final nativity performance which was, again, quite a spectacle!

Stickman learning has continued this week with a walk to try to find him and his Family Tree. We learned about oak trees and identified some oak leaves while we were on our second trailblazer walk. We think we might have found the Family Tree but we didn't see Stickman, his stick lady love or his three stick children!

This week has also been a big week for assessments! All of the children have taken part in phonics assessments ready for the new year and the year 1 children have also done incredibly well in their maths assessments.

We are all looking forward to our Christmas learning next week.

Pippin 2023-2024 Stickman

  

Weeks 3 and 4 We're going on a bear hunt

What fun learning we have done this week! We have made bears and caves using craft and construction. We have made bears out of circles and drawn them on the interactive whiteboard. We have also been on an "epic" and "awesome" bear hunt around Ilmington that was, apparently, "the best day ever"! 

We have sung maths songs helping us to learn about 1 more and 1 less and the year 1 have learned how to work out if a number is odd or even.

We have also been practising hard for our nativity play which we are very much looking forward to performing for everyone in the church.

Pippin 2023-2024 We're going on a bear hunt

 

Weeks 1 and 2 Room on the Broom

The new half term has begun with a very busy couple of weeks. We have created some beautiful firework art on large pieces of black paper and learned about the gunpowder plot. 

We watched a short film introducing Remembrance and then made poppies using a range of media before taking part in the Remembrance service at the war memorial.

We have enjoyed an introduction to our new book, Room on the Broom, and look forward to making wands, broomsticks and a variety of potions!

Year 1 maths has focused on number bonds to 10 and doubles while the reception have been working on shape and numbers 4 and 5. 

Pippins have also learned a bit more about how to keep safe near the roads by designing some bright and reflective clothing for Warwick Bear. Our own Fred Bear came back from his half term adventures and has set off again with another family!

We have all worked so hard and have been excited that our families will get to see our work at parents' evening.

Diwali was a fun festival to learn about. We made diva lamps which we will paint in bright colours before we light them, we chalked rangoli patterns in our outside area, we decorated our (paper!) hands with patterns and we made some sweets to share. While the reception were exploring the Hindu festival, Year 1 were on a trip learning about the Great Fire or Warwick. They had a non stop day of walking to specific points in Warwick comparing the town's devastating fire with the Great Fire of London.

Pippin 2023-2024 Room on the Broom

 

Term 1

Weeks 7 and 8 The Gigantic Turnip

We had a very muddy autumn walk this week. During our walk we looked for the signs that it is autumn as well as putting into practice what we have learned about road safety. This walk was also the very first of our Trail Blazer hikes. You can learn more about Trail Blazers and the Ilmington 11 here.

We have started creating our own autumn display table with leaves, cones and conkers. We will continue to create this seasonal display next week with the vegetables that we will bring in from home.

In the last week of term, we have been very busy with assessments of our maths and phonics. We have also had lots of fun making soup with all the vegetables you have sent in as well as playing instruments to tell the story of The Giagantic Turnip.

It was very interesting looking inside some of the different vegetables. Some of them were very wet and slimy!

Fred Bear had another great week with another family. He went on a car trip and on a pony ride as well as crossing the road safely by holding hands.

Pippin 2023-2024 The Gigantic Turnip

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 Weeks 5 and 6 Funnybones

We have begun looking at our new book, Funnybones. We have ordered the characters from the story according to size and have labelled skeletons.

Year 1 have been working on the mathematical language used to compare groups of objects and numbers.

We had an interesting afternoon of investigating our sense of touch. We discovered that we didn't need to just use our hands to feel things and that all the skin all over our body can also be used. We categorised a variety of objects according to how they felt and thought carefully about the vocabulary we used.

We have also begun learning about Road Safety by joining the Road Safety Spies along with Fred Bear. Fred will come to visit each child at home throughout the year to help us with our learning about road safety.

Year 1 have had some fun changing the words to the beginning of Funnybones. Instead of being on a dark, dark hill, there was a dark, dark mountain, instead of a dark, dark house, there was a dark, dark castle and instead of skeletons, we had vampires!

Our maths this week has been all about patterns, capacity and composition of numbers to ten. We have used a great game on the interactive whiteboard where we had to choose the correct shapes to complete a repeated pattern. If you want to play at home click here.

Thursday afternoon brought us a very smelly classroom! We used our sense of smell to try to decide what was inside the secret tubs. Some of the smells we liked and some, we really didn't! 

This week we also completed the four missions and became fully fledged Road Safety Spies! Fred enjoyed his first week being out and about and we all enjoyed finding out what he had been up to. He has now been passed on to the next family and we are looking forward to finding out where he has been.

Pippin 2023-2024 Funnybones

 

Weeks 2, 3 and 4 Each Peach Pear Plum

Our second week has been full of fun learning and we have again been making the most of the lovely weather!

We have begun looking at our new book, Each Peach Pear Plum and have really enjoyed playing our own versions of I spy using objects and also using initial sounds of words.

We have also learned about our sense of sight and that we use our eyes and the light around us to be able to see things. Trying to play some games using both eyes, one eye and no eyes to see what we are doing was very interesting!

Some of our work on feelings is on the wall in our classroom. We identified how people might be feeling just by looking at their facial expressions.

During our third week of the term, we have been for a walk around Ilmington. We found a shop, a pub, a bus stop, a church, a letter box, the village hall and our own school! We also went for a listening walk around school and discovered that we needed to be very quiet in order to hear some of the softer sounds. Identifying loud sounds wasn't difficult on Thursday when we experienced the first fire drill of the year.

Reception children have worked on matching and sorting in maths while the year 1 have been focussing on the composition of numbers to 5 and learning how to use part whole models and bar models.

We ended the week enjoying the very wet and muddy mud kitchen!

Our fourth week has been full of deciding how to sort objects and describing groups we have made in maths. We have also done some taste tests using one of our five senses where we have classified foods into those that are sweet, sour, salty, savoury or bitter. 

As part of the work on our book, Each Peach Pear Plum, we have looked at old and modern objects. We enjoyed trying to match the old to the modern and finding out what certain artefacts actually were!

Pippin 2023-2024 Each Peach Pear Plum

 

Week 1 Settling in

We started the new school year with an amazing week of beautiful sunshine. We have enjoyed getting to know one another and everyone has now gained a fair idea of how Ilmington School and Pippin Class work!

Our Year 1 children have been amazing role models for the reception children and have really helped in settling them in. Thank you!

Everyone has had fun playing outside on the bikes, in the mud kitchen and in the sandpit as well as enjoying the role play room, the interactive white board and the craft area.

We hope you will enjoy reading our blog throughout the year and looking at all the photos of our learning.

Pippin 2023-2024 Settling in