Friday Update February 6 to 10

It has been a busy and inspiring week!  If you want to have hope in our future and our world, just come into a class of four year olds! J

This week some of our learning included…

*Preparing for our SPCA fundraiser. The SPCA is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We have planned out how to raise money for them (you saw our e-mail home J) and are busy organizing all of the details. The students have made posters to inform others about how important being kind to animals is, as well as the things they need, have made a sign, made donation boxes, figured out what we need to get to make banana bread, researched the SPCA to get more information, and have been spreading the word thoughout the school. The students are extremely passionate about this, and I couldn’t be more proud of their efforts. Next week we will be baking A LOT of banana bread so we are ready for the 21^st!

*The ELC started KinderMusic this week. They have a 30 minute session once a week until the beginning of March. The students loved it, and they sang, played the wooden sticks and did some dancing with scarves.

*worked to finish the drawings we started with Todd Parr and used some special art markers.

*experimented with shapes and numbers.

*made notes to share with each other.

*talked a lot about kindness (as we always do J) and read some Valentine’s day books.

*and much, much, more!

REMINDERS / UPCOMING DATES

*February 13^th: Special Empty Bowls Project with Interim Semester High School Students—see e-mail update for details

*February 14^th: Valentine’s Day –We will just be celebrating as a class (no party and no need to make Valentines.)

*February 17^th: Empty Bowls Lunch-send $5 for this charity if you would like to.

*February 22^nd: Alternate Dress Day

*March 16^th and 17^th:  Parent-Teacher Conferences

*March 18-26th:  Spring Break-No School

Week 23 Feb 6 to 10

Friday Update Feb 1 to 3

I hope you and your family had a wonderful CNY break!  It has been a funny week, as it was so short, and we were missing quite a few of our kiddos due to vacation or illness (on Wednesday we only had 9!) So we decided to do some things out of the ordinary! J

This week some of our learning included…

*more animal explorations, discussions and play. Our Cat and Dog project was relaunched. Through play, drawing, and creating, the students have continued talking about the “perfect” home for a pet, and what pets really need to have in their home. We talked about important things people should know about animals, and are thinking to try and raise some money for the animal shelter here…more to come!

*Arunika, Renee and Florence’s moms came in to do our international fair project with the students.

*We went to the BIG Elementary School library to check out some books for our classroom library, and some books to help us in propelling our project work. Because we were already down on that end, we stopped at the rooftop playground (a HUGE hit!) for a play.

*We talked about our Chinese New Year holidays, and drew and wrote about them. We have really been concentrating on the way the letters look and sound.

*Santa is back in our classroom. Who knew? Some of the students dragged the Santa hats back out, and have been making presents out of paper and blocks and magnatiles, drawing pictures of things they should give kids for Christmas and they made a sleigh!  You just never know what is about to happen in our classroom!

*and much, much, more!

REMINDERS / UPCOMING DATES

*February 8^th: Alternate Dress Day

*February 14^th: Valentine’s Day –We will just be celebrating as a class (no party and no need to make Valentines.)

*February 22^nd: Alternate Dress Day

*March 16^th and 17^th:  Parent-Teacher Conferences

*March 18-26th:  Spring Break-No School Week 22 Feb 1 to 3

Photos from last week (Jan 23 to 26)

Week 21 Jan 23 to 26

Friday Update January 20

We realized we had a day where all 16 were at school!  We snapped some pictures, and soon rediscovered how hard it is to get everyone smiling and looking at the camera! Oh well, we decided to be silly! WE ARE AWESOME!

It has been a busy week! We had a visit from amazing author and illustrator TODD PARR! We also had a lesson with Ms. Sarah on trying to solve problems. Please let me know if you are interested in taking home Mango and Oreo Cookie for the Chinese New Year holiday. So many of our kiddos have asked! They have their normal big cage, but also their small traveling cage.

This week some of our learning included…

*more animal explorations, discussions and play. Our Cat and Dog project was relaunched. Through play, drawing, and creating, the students have begun talking about the “perfect” home for a pet, and what pets really need to have in their home. One of the kiddos asked about Garfield (the SAS cat) and another asked about all of the animals that don’t have homes to live in.  Our project is off and running again!

*getting ready for Chinese New Year. A few of the students came in and asked if we could make some decorations for the classroom. Many of the students have been making lanterns, as well as cherry blossoms after looking at a book about celebrating Chinese New Year

*spent a lot of time with our 100 chart—we counted by 1’s 5’s and 10’s, used stickers to show different amounts, wrote numbers in order, and patterned on the 100 chart with beads and stones

*practiced writing our letters and coming up with words that started with that letter. (This came from an interest in writing the letters at one of our literacy tables.)

*made books for Todd Parr (he is a hero in our class—feel free to check the side of my blog under favorite authors for the link to his website)

*visited with Todd Parr—he read us some of his books, showed us how he draws, and told us about himself and his dogs! His messages are what the world needs to hear right now!  So amazing!  He is in our classroom with us next week. We are very excited!

*Ms. Sarah told us about how we can solve our own problems (use our words (“Stop-I don’t like that! It makes me feel sad when you…”) ignore, move away) and she read us the book One, which became a fast favorite!

*and much, much, more!

REMINDERS / UPCOMING DATES

*Please send in a family photo if we do not have one here at school yet. Also please send in your Message of Inspiration for your child.

*Please make sure your child’s lunch card is topped up. You should be getting reminders when the balance is low.

*January 25^th: Todd Parr in our classroom

*January 25th: PHOTO MAKE UP DAY! If your child has not had a school photo taken, they will be done this day. This is also an ALTERNATE DRESS DAY for everyone.

*January 26^th: Lion Dance for all ELC students-wear Chinese New Year dress or colors.

*January 27^th: NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS—Faculty Inservice Day

*January 30^th, 31^st: NO SCHOOL—Chinese New Year Holiday Week 20 Jan 16 to 20

Friday Update January 13

What a wonderful start back to school!!! Aidah and I are so happy to see all of our kiddos back with us, excited and enthusiastic about the next part of their learning journey! And we are excited to welcome Aaliya, MeiCheng and Oliver to our classroom family. Truthfully it feels like they have always been with us!  Your children have been amazingly welcoming and friendly.  What a class we have!

Report cards should be available to view today, the office of learning will be sending the link by e-mail.

This week some of our learning included…

*more animal explorations, discussions and play. The students took out all of the small animals, have been making habitats for them again, have played “Family Pet” in the dramatic play area, have drawn castles full of animals, and picked out animal stories to read. This is obviously still a big interest for our students so we will see where it will take us over the next little while…

*put “water babies” (little dots!) into water and watched what happened over a period of a couple of days.

*shared about our holidays and wrote and drew about our experiences.

*used 2D pattern blocks and 3D shapes to build.

*practiced our letters and sounds—we became inspired by some of the words shared for some of our letters, and decided to do bubble painting and marble painting!

*used our mud kitchen to cook “pet” food and snacks.

* made new playdoh and created with moon sand.

*used numbers to represent different numbers of objects around the classroom.

*played buggy bingo.

*gave Mango and Oreo a bath and haircut, and reminded ourselves how to be gentle and respectful with our animals.

*and much, much, more!

REMINDERS / UPCOMING DATES

*Blue Friday Folder bags are going home today. Please empty them and send them back on Monday. We are missing a few bags too, so if you have one hanging around at home, please send it back to us. J

*Please send in a family photo if we do not have one here at school yet. Also please send in your Message of Inspiration for your child.

*Please make sure your child’s lunch card is topped up. You should be getting reminders when the balance is low.

*January 20^th: Todd Parr Visiting ELC!

*January 25^th: Todd Parr in our classroom

*January 26^th: Lion Dance for all ELC students-wear Chinese New Year dress or colors.

*January 27^th: NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS—Faculty Inservice Day

*January 30^th, 31^st: NO SCHOOL—Chinese New Year Holiday Week 19 January 9 to 13