From Mrs Hall

It's been another busy, fun-filled time in Pre-Prep this week. To participate in, and recognise National Anti-Bullying Week, a lot of focus at school this week has been on friendship and kindness. I led an assembly at the beginning of the week, reading a story all about an unkind dog! A simple, yet powerful message for us all. Please do speak to your boys about how we have been showing acts of kindness this week.

I have observed lots of lessons this week, and have particularly enjoyed seeing the Year 1s zooming around the playground in their amazing, creative jetpacks! Reception have been learning about Diwali and Year 2 have become scientists! I’m not sure, after our discovery of microbes and cheese, whether some boys will ever eat cheese again!

It was great to see so many of you at the PPA Fireworks event on Friday evening. There are lots more exciting events coming up in the next three weeks, so please keep an eye on the calendar for these. 

Hope you all have a wonderful Exeat weekend.

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Pilgrims' Shell Awards

Year 2 - William M in Year 2 for always showing kindness and empathy. 
Year 1 - to Guy for really trying (and succeeding!) to make good choices with his behaviour and showing kind manners to others. A super impressive week, Guy! 
Year R - to Tomas, for being a kind and caring member of class.

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Save the Dates!

A reminder of upcoming events next week and other dates for your diaries for this term. Please keep a look-out for further details.

Saturday 25 November	Wellbeing Matters LIVE, 0830-0930 in the Octagon
Wednesday 29 November	Drama Workshops for all year groups
Friday 1 December	Pilgrims' Play (music) session in the Pre-Prep for pre-schoolers, 1000-1100
Tuesday 5 December	Pre-Prep Nativity dress rehearsal and photos
Wednesday 6 December	Pre-Prep Nativity - Prickly Hay! 0900-1000 Invitation will follow.
Monday 11 December	Pre-Prep Open Classrooms 0830-0900
Tuesday 12 December	Pre-Prep Open Classrooms 0830-0900
Wednesday 13 December	End of term, 1400 Carol Service, Cathedral 1530
Tuesday 9 January	Lent Term 2024 begins

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Notices

Menus for next week are available here on My School Portal. 

Reminder: no food is to be brought into the school and/or given to boys at any time, especially at sign-out.

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From the PPA

 

Year 2

The boys have continued their learning of addition and subtraction, with problem-solving and games, working in small groups. Karate Cats Maths (bbc.co.uk) has also proved popular this week. The boys have enjoyed playing independently, challenging themselves on the three levels; Bronze, Silver and Gold.

If ever there was a more cross-curricular afternoon, ahead of the PPA Fireworks display last Friday, the boys enjoyed sewing their poppies, scratching their wax resist fireworks and creating a Rangoli pattern for Diwali. We had a great day!

Mrs Kent
 

Year 1

Diwali – the Hindu Festival of Lights and rocket packs! 

This half term has all been about LIGHT for Year 1. Linking to our Space topic this term, the boys came back from the half-term break to investigate the sun. This led our classroom discussions on to natural and human-made sources of light (including stars and fireworks), objects that create or simply reflect light, how shadows are made, and what really is the dark? LIGHT has been a wonderful stimulus to learn more about some key dates in the autumn calendar, starting with Guy Fawkes Night and fireworks, Remembrance Day and now, Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light.  

Year 1 has been really interested to find out about this festival. Did you know that over a billion people celebrate Diwali worldwide, making it one of the biggest religious festivals in the world? Hindu communities celebrate Diwali to show their respect to Rama and Sita. When Sita was kidnapped by an evil demon king, she left a trail of her jewellery for Rama to follow. He was able to find her, defeat the evil king and head home where lamps had been lit to guide them to safety. We made our own diyas (little oil lamps) using the glitter pens on the Purple Mash computer programme. The boys loved the idea of placing these diyas outside your home to welcome friends in to celebrate. Many boys linked this to decorating their houses for our Christian festival of light, Christmas.  

Along with diyas, rangoli patterns are created to welcome the Hindu Goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi, into people’s homes. Traditionally, these are made out of coloured rice, powder or flower petals. We have looked at lots of different pictures and watched some footage of them being made during Diwali festivals around the country. We have been inspired to make our own out of 2D shapes, Numicon and glitter. The boys have really enjoyed trying to make their patterns symmetrical and even tesselate! A final treat at the end of the week was to eat our special Diwali Firework snacks which we made out of breadsticks, chocolate and sprinkles. YUM! 

Year 1 has really impressed this week. Well done, boys! 

Mrs Ford

 

Year R

Happy Diwali!  The boys have had a great week this week learning about the Hindu 'Festival of light' Diwali.  We started by watching a short clip about a little girl who celebrates Diwali and what she does to get ready.  We learnt many different ways in which this festival is celebrated.  These include creating rangoli patterns, dressing in new clothes, spring cleaning the house and having big get-togethers with family and friends.  

It was great fun creating our own large rangoli pattern on the classroom floor with Miss Whitmore.  Dried dry rice was used to do this and each group of boys worked on a small section each.  Super concentration and accuracy was shown by placing rice carefully onto symmetrical shaped pictures, which the boys drew around themselves.  A fabulous masterpiece!  Thank you, Miss Whitmore, for helping with this!

 

Diva lamps were also made using clay and sparkly gems.  The boys worked hard to create a hole in the centre of their clay ball and then squeeze the clay, making the hole large enough to fit a tea light inside.  A pattern of gems was then pressed into the clay.  We will wait for the Divas to dry and then hopefully be able to paint them too.

 

I have been very impressed with how much knowledge and interest the boys have learnt and shown this week.  Do ask them who Lakeshmi is, what a Diva is and why these are lit in houses for Diwali.  

Maybe you would like to make some rangoli patterns at home of your own.  They are great fun to do.  Very calming. Have a lovely Exeat weekend.

Mrs Huntley

 

Forest School

This week Year R made some very sweet leaf peg people. The boys took the leaf peg people on an adventure and changed their hairstyle regularly!

The autumn colours inspired the boys in Year 1 to create an autumn colour ball. After using colour charts to spot as many different autumn colours as they could, the boys then carefully selected some natural items that they felt reflected their autumn and moulded them into a piece of clay. The boys were very pleased with their beautiful end results.

This week the boys in Year 2 learned about where small invertebrates might go to at this time of year. We chatted about log and leaf piles and had a look for some small holes that might be a suitable habitat. As a class, we were keen to continue building our class bug hotel, so using a half a plastic bottle, canes, sticks, bark and leaves, the boys designed a suitable home for a bug that fitted perfectly into our bug hotel at school.

Mrs Walker
Forest School Leader