Blog 2.3: January 18-23

Thank you, parents for your attendance and participation in Sports Day. I think our class really enjoyed being part of a larger team, with students from Kindergarten and Reception and have a sense of pride for participating in the team building events. If you have any photos you would like for me to post on the blog from sports day, please send me an email with the attachments. I have some great photos from Nine that I will post at the end of the blog.

This week, we did a lot of role playing related to shopping. I have noticed that my students enjoy pretending to do activities that they do with their friends and families outside of school. Some of my students discuss shopping with their parents,  buying food to cook meals at home, and going to the mall to look for clothes. In our classroom, we set up a grocery store and a food store with items laid out and organized on tables, shopping carts and cash registers. Everybody joined in and took turns shopping and exchanging money. Here are some photo highlights from the week:

Peach, Taj and Cooper buying items in our class store

Forty, Angie and Taj going through the deli section of the class store

I-Aun being a cashier

I-Aun painting a box that we later made into a drum

Peach  painting a box that we later made into a drum

Nine putting beans into a water bottle to make a shaker

Forty working on a guitar 

Wen Wen making a shaker

Cooper making a guitar

Our pet tadpoles turned into baby banded bull frogs

This week we have been revisiting many of the routines of being at school. We needed some help sitting nicely, lining up and doing things independently after the Term 1 break. We took photos and put them up as reminders of what nice behavior at school looks like. You can help at home by having the same expectations that we have at school. Please encourage your child to put on his or her shoes independently, to wait calmly for adult support or direction before going somewhere new, and to take responsibility in helping to dress, feed and carry their backpacks to and from school. Children this age are capable of doing these things (I see your child doing these things every day!) and gain an important sense of self, as well as confidence in being given these types of responsibilities. Consistency in routine with these kinds of things will also make your life easier in the long run!

We can, and are expected to line up nicely

We can sit nicely, with our feet crossed or outstretched in front of our bodies

When appropriate, we sit around a table to do work. We are practicing our food vocabulary by playing matching games

We had a lesson about shapes, and how to construct more complicated figures using simple shapes. We folded balloons into hats and animals, and made bubble wands out of pipe cleaners

The diamond shaped wand made the biggest bubbles

Everybody had a turn

Finally, here are some photos from sports day:

Blog 2.3 January 11-15

We had a great week discussing animal life cycles and learning about things we see in our environment. My class has become much more descriptive and observant this term. This gives us new opportunities to talk about what we see, what we like, and what we would like to learn more about. Animals are a shared interest amongst every student and this week we had the opportunity to meet some real animals!

We now have tadpoles as class pets, and have been to visit Ms. Casey's pet caterpillar. The students are very excited to watch some big transformations over the next few weeks.

Our tadpoles like to eat broccoli

Here are some photo highlights for the week:

We modeled the caterpillar>butterfly life cycle by using mixed materials

Some of us wanted to try to make other types of insects

Forty and I-Aun found all of the 0 and 2 magnets

Nine sorted different items based on shape

Forty and Angie made a spider web and chose animals to put in it

Taj made a frog family to live in the doll house

I-Aun went shopping to get items for her pet frog

Blog 2.2 January 5-8

This week was a good week for getting back into the routine of being at school, and beginning our new unit on food and bugs and amphibians. My class particularly enjoys pretending to shop, cook and eat in the home corner seem very inquisitive about learning about new foods. In the next couple of weeks, we will make our own class grocery store for role playing, cook together as a class, and begin discussing what some of our favorite foods are. 

We will also be learning about different kinds of insects, what ways we can classify and sort bugs based on their size, habitat and life cycle. We will be looking at the transition of a caterpillar to a butterfly, and from a tadpole to a frog.We are lucky enough to have a lot of live animals to look for and study on the ASCOT grounds. 

We had a water tray day while the pool was being fixed 

Splashing and pouring with friends

Getting our feet wet feels nice in the hot weather

Wen Wen learns how to play, and that it's okay to get wet

Cooper making some soup in the home corner

I-Aun is making a cake in preparation for her birthday party

Nine is on the phone asking where 4D is and telling him to, "get well soon"

Peach has enjoyed dressing up like Snow White

Snow White and a dinosaur enjoy dressing up together

I-Aun is a helpful friend

This week we celebrated I-Aun's birthday. Happy Birthday, I-Aun!