If you are in South Molton over the next few days, please do try to pop in to the Christmas Tree Festival at South Molton Parish Church and see if you can spot the Bishops Nympton Primary School tree!  The children from classes 1, 2 and 3 have worked really hard making their own decorations which you will be able to see on the tree.  The tree  is on display at the Festival from Thursday 30th November – Monday 4th December.

Class 1 and pre-school have been learning about farming this term.  We have learnt about where our food comes from and to make this real to the children we read the story of The Little Red Hen.  Yesterday we all made bread together.  The children worked beautifully together with the older ones helping the younger ones and at the end of the day, they all had two bread rolls that they had made themselves to take home for their tea!

We’re well into the Autumn term now and the children have settled into school life really well.  We are really enjoying our new topic of farming and have also been learning about Autumn and the changes that happen this season.

Class 1:  what a fantastic year we have had!  The end of a school year is a time of mixed emotions, happy that we have a nice long break, sad that children are moving on from our classes or from the school, pride in all the children have achieved and excitement at a new beginning and new children joining us in September.

The children in class 1 have worked so hard this year and have achieved so much.  It still amazes me how they start school not being able to read and write, yet after only one year they have learnt how to do it!  Children are amazing, your children are amazing and they have been an absolute pleasure to teach this year.

Thank you to all our parents for your continued support, it is very much appreciated.  We wish you all a wonderful summer and remember…. keep reading!! 😉

Alison Hancock and the Infant Team.

At Bishops Nympton we consider ourselves very fortunate to have our own pre-school.  This is especially good at this time of year, when we are able to ensure lots of interaction between our pre-school and Reception classes so that the transition into Reception in September goes as smoothly as possible.

A regular Leap into Life session happens every Monday all year round, but we have also built in extra sessions every week to ensure that all our new September intake are coming into school every other week to help familiarise themselves with their new classroom, staff and children.

We look forward to welcoming the children into the Reception class again in the morning.

Class one had a lovely time at Rosemoor today as part of our learning about life and living things.  Our morning was spent learning about minibeasts or invertebrates as they are also known.  We went on a minibeast hunt where we found woodlice, spiders and beetles, we were also lucky enough to find a newt and a frog!  It was all very exciting!

We then met up with our East Anstey friends for lunch.

After lunch we went exploring in the garden.  We enjoyed looking at all the beautiful plants and flowers, the roses smelt amazing!  We also had time for a play in the play area.  I am incredibly proud of all of the children for their impeccable behaviour.  We had many members of the public commenting to us on how well behaved the children were, and they truly were, well done class 1 we’re very proud of you.  A massive thank you once again to all our our adult helpers, very much appreciated.

Alison Hancock

Class one have been learning about life cycles as part of our Science this week and we were very lucky to have a visit from Joshua’s butterflies.  Joshua had some caterpillars given to him for his birthday and he watched them closely at home as they grew and changed into butterflies.  Joshua’s mum very kindly brought them in to school to show us yesterday and we all watched and Joshua set them free on the playground.  Many thanks to Joshua and his mum for sharing that experience with us.

Another busy week in class 1 with plenty of active learning.  Our Talk For Writing literacy lessons are proving very successful with children modelling their writing on carefully chosen books.  This has improved both the quality and quantity of writing produced by year ones and by children in reception.  Having started a new book this week we are now getting to know the story really well and spent some time acting out the story which was great fun!

In our Maths this week we have been learning about Capacity which has been great fun and again very practical.  We then went on to learn about data handling where we learnt about Pictograms and bar charts which again was very active as we set about finding different shapes in and around our classroom and logging them on our own pictograms.

Class 1 spent some time finding and naming plants this afternoon.  We learnt that some plants have flowers and produce seeds that then grow into new plants.  We learnt about the life cycle of a dandelion and we learnt the names of some plants, flowers and trees.  We found daisies, dandelions, bluebells and stinging nettles.

We looked at the leaves on our beautiful  copper beech tree and the flowers on the horse chestnut tree.  Spring is a beautiful time of year to take our learning outside and make the most of our wonderful outside space.

Sadly we found some litter on the playground but picked it up and then used this opportunity to talk about looking after our world and our environment and being responsible.  Everyone agreed that we are lucky to have such a lovely school and that we should all do our best to look after it and keep it clean and tidy.

We even found some egg shells.

Class one had a busy afternoon back at school after the bank holiday with visit from Naomi’s chicks!  All of the children had the opportunity to hold a chick if they wanted to, we noticed how soft their baby feathers are and that, although they are only two weeks old, they are already getting their adult feathers on their wings.

We learnt that the chicks are different colours because they are different breeds, the yellow ones are Light Sussex and the grey one is a Jersey Giant.  The children also learnt that we say that chicks hatch rather than are born.  The children were really good at sitting quietly so that they didn’t frighten the chicks.  We look forward to welcoming them back again as they grow so we can see how they change as they grow.  Many thanks to Naomi’s parents for bringing their chicks in.

Pre-school visit:  we also welcomed our second group of pre-school children into class this afternoon, but we were all so busy I forgot to take photos, sorry, next time!  This second visit means that all children attending our pre-school have now had their first visit to their new class for September.  These visits will continue until the end of the summer term giving the children plenty of time to get to know staff, children and the school.