From Mrs Ross

As always, it has been a pleasure to spend time with your sons at school, during our first full week of the New Year.  Despite the wet, windy and gloomy weather, our boys and staff have tackled all activities with enthusiasm, both indoors and outdoors. 

The first Pre-Prep Celebration Assembly today, included the beginning of our new 'Set Point' graphs for this term and the excitement of finding out who our Pilgrims' Bears would be spending time with this weekend! Congratulations to the recipients of our Shell Awards and a very warm welcome to Leonardo and Keijiro, who join our Pre-Prep this term. 

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Pilgrims' Shell Awards

• Year 2 – to Isaac M for his focus and drive to complete his work.
• Year 1 - to both Leonardo and Keijiro- for settling so well into a new school and Year 1 class at Pilgrims'. 
• Reception - to Guy C for his fantastic enthusiasm and progress when blending letters together to create words!

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Diary dates

 

Diary dates	Times	The week ahead
Saturday 14 January	am	Senior School Fair (open to all)
Friday 20 January	0830	Pre-Prep coffee meeting

 

 

 

 

 

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Notices

Menus - Please find a link to next week's menus here, on My School Portal. (Next week's menu is to follow)

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From the PPA

 

Year 2

Mr Duncan recently referred to the Lent  Term as the engine house of the school year; the term when much progress is made. After the well-earnt Christmas break, there are many boys who have come back into the classroom with renewed motivation, grit, focus and attention to detail. I get the feeling the engines are gearing up for a very productive term full of much progress! 

In Maths, we have started to investigate British pounds and pence. In today’s post COVID world, physical money is less than common. Can you dig out any money at home and challenge your son to count it? Do they have a Piggy Bank, and could they tell me the total money inside? Perhaps they could be responsible for buying something small in their local shop, ensuring they give the right coins to the sales assistant and check for change if required? How many different ways can they find to make a pound? We have had a lot of fun investigating money from different countries but also playing with larger than life British pounds and pence. The boys showed brilliant accuracy when playing various money games on the Surface-Gos during our Wednesday afternoon Maths lesson. 

As we settle into this term, we shall be experimenting with various writing implements to start the journey to writing with a handwriting pen. We have many different types of handwriting pens to try out, but we start our investigation with a clever pen with a clever grip. Many boys find they really enjoy writing in pen because it can help their writing to flow better, but others find they do not like the inability to rub things out. I would welcome the boys practising their weekly Look, Cover, Say, Write, Check Spellings with various writing implements they have at home should they wish – scented gel pens have quite a following, for instance! My only request is, if they find it hinders their neat handwriting, it should be left alone.  

The boys are certainly keen for this term’s topic of Amazing Africa. We have refreshed our memory of continents and oceans in the world and started to focus in on Africa. Challenge them to tell you how many countries Africa is made up of! 
Mrs Ford

Year 1

Welcome back to the Lent Term 2023 in Year 1! 

It was lovely to see you all again after the Christmas break and hear about your celebrations and family time. I think the boys have shot up and grown in the holidays. It was clear that they were very pleased to see each other again. A very big welcome also, to Leonardo and Keijiro who joined our Year 1 class this week. We know you will be very happy being part of our Pilgrims' family. The boys enjoyed sharing their holiday news with each other about the many varied experiences Christmastime brought.  From these discussions, they were able to write about their Christmas holidays and paint pictures linked to this. A fantastic start to the new term.

This term, the boys will be learning about Castles and Knights. They are very excited about this and have been sharing their existing knowledge about the topic already. At the end of the term, following many different activities and experiences, we will look back at this information and see how it has grown!  

 

The boys thoroughly enjoyed their computing session this week using the programme Purple Mash. Using a Surface Go device, they were able to paint a castle using the mouse pad in various textures, using the colour palette: a very delicate and precise activity. To add to this, they used the keyboard to type 'My castle by...'; to save the document and print it out.  Wow! Very impressive computing skills listened to and learnt. The boys were so proud of their work that another copy was made, so they could bring a copy home to share with you. Do ask them how they made their castle picture.

A super start to the term. Well done for adjusting back to school life, boys. Have a lovely weekend.
Mrs Huntley

Reception

The boys have impressed us immensely this week, with their enthusiasm to learn and excitement of being back in their classroom. They were full of tales to tell (in great detail) about their Christmas presents, trips taken, and places visited, as well as three boys celebrating their fifth birthdays - what a busy holiday it has been!

It has, as always, been a busy week, full of fun and learning with one boy telling his mum 'it’s been an amazing day' at home time on Monday afternoon!  What more could one ask for? The boys have embraced our new topic of Transport, and painted the most wonderful arrangement of vehicles, many complete with engines, before being painted over the top.

Please do come into the classroom and ask your son to tell you about their painting; they all have much detail to share.

Well done, boys; have a restful weekend! 
Mrs Kent

Forest School 

The beginning of a new term is always exciting and at this time of year we can start spotting some beautiful changes happening in nature. It was a bit of a muddy start for the Reception boys, but we decided to go outside and learn a new knot skill, and also make a stick pet. The stick pets then went for a rather muddy and wet walk! We also spent time identifying things in nature that made us feel happy, that felt nice, and even tasted the rain falling from the sky.

Year 1 had great fun when they went on a nature scavenger hunt. The boys worked cooperatively with each other to try and find a range of different things and if they could, place their collection in a hoop. In free exploration time the boys enjoyed creating their own stories, weaving and learning how to use our hammock.

The boys in Year 2 had great fun imagining they were squirrels hiding their stash of acorns for the winter months. Each boy was given five imitation acorns to hide safely in the arboretum. After exploring natural symmetrical patterns, the boys returned to the zone where we had hidden the acorns in. The boys were given limited time to try and find as many acorns as they could to see whether they would survive the long winter. This became a test of memory as well as a survival game!
Mrs Walker