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: