From Mrs Hall

The boys' awareness of current global challenges and the need to all play our part in helping to protect the planet, was impressive and reassuring. The boys listened to a story all about a young boy and a beach littered with stranded starfish. The story teaches us that we can all make a difference to the world, no matter how big a problem can seem and no matter how small our actions appear, we can change the world a little bit at a time.

Thank you to all those parents who supported out Positive parenting evening on Tuesday. It was a successful evening, and I am sure we all took something away from it.

I hope you enjoy the extended weekend.

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Pilgrims' Shell Awards

Year 2 - to James H for his resilience and working hard on his writing.
Year 1 - to Ben Hartwright for always being willing to tidy up and look after his classroom! Well done, Ben!
Year R - to Willoughby for being aware of his environment and how to look after it.  He often shares his knowledge by quoting Steve Backshall, and what he does.

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Save the Dates!

Monday 5 May	Bank Holiday - no school
Friday 11 May	PPA Event: Breakfast in the Yard 08:00 Whole School Open Morning for prospective parents, 09:30
Monday 13 May	RNLI Visit the Pre-Prep
Tuesday 14 May	Year 2 Trip to Dell Quay
Thursday 16 May	Year 2 Forest School with St Swithun's School
Friday 17 May	Pre-Prep Pilgrims' Play (Hungry Caterpillar) - for prospectives
Monday 20 May	Reception trip to the Blue Reef Aquarium, Portsmouth
Tuesday 21 May	Year 1 Trip to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard
Thursday 24 May	Pre-Prep Celebration Assembly 11:15-11:45 Half-Term begins, 12:00

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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.}

Open Days

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From the PPA

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Commoners Report

This term Cartoon Commoner has morphed, quite literally, into Animation/Modelling Commoner. 

Last week, we began by making small little plasticine pets. With just a piece of clay, the boys were set the challenge of making their own model, no bigger than their thumb. Inspiration was given through a whistlestop tour of Creature Comforts Long Weekend in İstanbul is the New Cool | Go Türkiye (youtube.com) and, after a slight pause, the boys set to work, a little tentatively at first, but as you may have realised, sorry for the late dismissal, time went way too fast, with the boys becoming engrossed in modelling and small little creatures emerged. 

This week I took a trip down memory lane and introduced the boys to Morph, and they were equally pleased with their creations. Well done, boys! As Monday is a Bank Holiday and an extended Exeat weekend, please do feel free to send me any photos of models made over the weekend.

Happy modelling! 

Year 2

This term, Year 2 are taking the plunge and diving into the deep. We have begun by looking at the five oceans and this week we dived down into their layers. We do hope you like our collaborative collage.

In Maths, we are studying fractions. First, equal and non-equal parts, leading to shapes and how these can be divided up before we start dividing number-sets by halves, quarters and thirds.

Mrs Kent 
Year 2 Teacher
 

Year 1

RNLI Mayday Mile Challenge
The boys have completely embraced our challenge throughout May to raise money for the RNLI. They have been interested to learn about the charity and the fact it is the fourth emergency service. The Mayday Challenge to complete a mile a day in May as a Year 1 team all started on Wednesday with walking the route. Thursday saw the class running it and on Friday we skipped it. The boys have come up with lots of ideas for how to complete it next week, including jumping, hopping and bouncing a ball as we go. We are going to have a lot of fun whilst raising money for a really worthwhile cause. Keep looking at Tapestry for photo updates! Any donations are greatly received. The link to our fundraising page is RNLI - Year 1 - The Pilgrims' School

PSHE – Fruit Faces
We are learning about healthy eating and what that should look like on our plate. We have talked about what the different food groups do for our body: carbohydrates give us energy, dairy helps our bones and teeth to grow, protein helps our muscles stay strong and fruit and vegetables give us vitamins. We are aiming to “eat a rainbow” with our fruit and vegetables. To help secure this message, we made fruit faces on Wednesday which was huge amounts of fun. The boys designed their faces using different fruit and then practised careful cutting skills by preparing the fruit they wished to use. The boys couldn’t wait to eat their fruit faces! Ben managed to include six different fruits in his fruit face and was most certainly full of vitamins!

Mrs Ford
Year 1 Teacher
 

Year R

The boys have been busy focusing on larger numbers in our Maths sessions this week.  Rote counting, recognising numerals and exploring how numbers are made up using 10s and 1s has been explored using both of the resources; Numicon and Tens- Frames. The boys were able to see that when a ten-frame is filled up with objects, we know there is a complete '10' (or one ten). When the next frame has fewer objects, for example 5 objects, we can add this on to the 10 to make 15 in total.  One 10 and 5 units (ones) = 15.  

You may like to practise rote counting as high as possible forwards and backwards at home and then to chat about how numbers are made up. For example, ask, 'how do we make the number 17?  If I had 10, how many would we need to add to this to make 17?'  If able to, you could explore higher numbers.  How many 10s and ones are there in 24? 37? 

 

During our Literacy sessions, the boys were introduced to the story Little Hotchpotch by Brian Patten and Michael Terry. 

Here, a little creature doesn't know who he is. He starts an important quest for identity. The little creature asks other animals, from the tiniest field mouse to the hugest polar bear, 'Who am I?' but nobody quite has the answer, except one wise friend. 

The boys discovered that he was a little bit of everything in the story; Little Hotchpotch, kindly read to us by Mr Reid, Director of Studies in the Year 3 Camp's bell-tent!

Mrs Huntley
Reception Teacher

Forest School

Year R were very excited this week as they had their first visit to Elizabeth Meads field which is owned by Winchester College. The boys learned how to move and carry larger sticks in order to create some wonderful giant woodland minibeasts. Imagination was used effectively, with an enormous caterpillar, a spider with its web and a very long worm being created. I was pleased with how well the boys worked together in small groups.

At this time of year, the birds are busy building nests and sitting on their eggs. So, Year 1 thought, after having a chat about the sort of materials that the birds would use, we should have a go at building a nest, but on a much larger scale. A nest big enough for the boys to sit in! Some of the boys even enjoyed having a rest in their nest and drinking their hot chocolate in it!

This week Year 2 recalled some of their knot skills and applied this knowledge to building a small stick raft. This activity really required concentration, team work and perseverance in order to overcome the challenges they faced. I was impressed with how well they worked together. We didn’t launch these rafts on the river, but some of the boys managed to make some smaller reed rafts that were able to go in the water.

Mrs Walker
Forest School Leader