Week 7 Highlights Sept 22 to 29

We celebrated another birthday this week!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JINQIAO!!!!

Sharing family stories, drawing pictures of our families, building, counting, one to one correspondence, interest in the letters of the alphabet and writing them, and continuing to explore through loose parts and a variety of different materials…just some of our explorations this week. Click on the highlights below, and don’t forget to check out the pictures from the week!

Highlights from this week-Click on link to see the slideshow:

Week 7 Highlights

REMINDERS

*Please return the BLUE BAG and RED LIBRARY BAG on Monday.

*Thursday, October 12 and Friday, October 13: Parent Teacher Conferences

Students do not attend these conferences.

*October 16^th to 20^th: Fall Break—No School

*Please send in a baby story if you haven’t yet—the students are VERY excited about sharing! J

*Thank you to everyone sending in extra fruit, granola bars, crackers and snacks—the kiddos have been enjoying them, especially first thing in the morning!  Healthy snacks help our brains work better during the day, so thank you very much. J

**Check out all of the pictures from the week below**

Week 7 Sept 25 to 29

100 new photos · Album by Lynsey Howitt

Week 6 Update Sept 18 to 22

We celebrated a birthday this week!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ARSH!!!!

We also had our counselor, Mr. Pearson come by our classroom to introduce himself and talk about friends. “Would you like to play with me?” and “Can I play with you?” are two questions students can ask each other on the playground. We can be kind, helpful and respectful friends to each other.

Exploring clay, working on our guinea pig playground, investigating numbers through birthday play, ant cakes and sand, making banana bread, baby stories…just some of our explorations this week. Click on the highlights below, and don’t forget to check out the pictures from the week!

Highlights from this week:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sV346dl6racLQHC5WDAOZn0XSc386YQVd9E71PbWJ4A/edit?usp=sharing

REMINDERS

*Please check in your child’s Friday Folder (the BLUE BAG) take everything out and return bag back to school on Monday.  We keep certain projects/activities here at school to put in your child’s learning journey (in case your child was talking about something you didn’t see.)  If the blue bag did not come home, they have either kept some things at school or did not make a lot of products to take home—they may have been exploring in other ways than painting, drawing, etc.

*Pleas return Library books and RED LIBRARY BAG on Monday.

*Wednesday, September 27^th: Alternate Dress Day

*Thursday, October 12 and Friday, October 13: Parent Teacher Conferences

The e-mail from the school should be sent to you soon, so look out for that. It will have instructions on how to sign up for a time to meet with me. Students do not attend these conferences.

*October 16^th to 20^th: Fall Break—No School

*Please send in a baby story if your haven’t yet—the students are VERY excited about sharing! J

*Thank you to everyone sending in extra fruit, granola bars, crackers and snacks—the kiddos have been enjoying them, especially first thing in the morning!  Healthy snacks help our brains work better during the day, so thank you very much. J

-Information about parents coming into the classroom will be sent home soon, so be sure to look out for that to see how you can be involved in our classroom family J Also, Mango and Oreo are feeling more settled and secure with the kiddos so let me know if you would like to take them home for a weekend, a long weekend, or the October Fall break. I already have a couple of interested families! J

Week 6 Sept 18 to 22

106 new photos · Album by Lynsey Howitt

Week 5 Update September 11 to 15

Our amazing learners and explorers dove deep this week into counting, patterns, color and experimenting. Please click on the links below for documentation. (Please let me know if you have any issues viewing them—they are google slides and can be quirky sometimes!) 

Highlights from this week

Exploring Color

REMINDERS

*Friday, September 22^nd: Early Release Day—11:30 am Dismissal

*Thursday, October 12 and Friday, October 13: Parent Teacher Conferences

*October 16^th to 20^th: Fall Break—No School

*Please send in a family photo and a baby story. J

*Thank you to everyone sending in extra fruit, granola bars, crackers and snacks—the kiddos have been enjoying them, especially first thing in the morning!  Healthy snacks help our brains work better during the day, so thank you very much. 

Please see all of the photos from this week by click on the slideshow below:

Week 5 Sept 11 to 15

79 new photos · Album by Lynsey Howitt

Weekly Update September 5 to 8

We have had another amazing week! Our learners are settled, comfortable, and happy! They were sad to end the day Friday, even they were so completely exhausted, so I am excited to start back with them tomorrow!

There were a lot of things happening in the hub this week, but a few main ideas seemed to come through as the students were interacting…

Building:

-airplanes, airports, zoos and spaceships

Animals-safety and belonging:

-making enclosures, safe homes, animal families, friend groups

Colors:

-the friendship of color, colors with a variety of different materials, how colors match each other

Ideas Jumping:

-from one person to another, from one material to another, from one space to another

The Joy of Exploring:

-the absolute fun of finding out new things with new materials with new friends!

I will send some of the documentation from these interests very soon.

REMINDERS

**A note about ice-cream. Aidah is still a little confused about which students should be allowed to have ice-cream on Fridays (some conflicting notes on lunch menus.)  Can you please either write a little note and put it in your child’s zippy pouch or send Aidah an e-mail at zuraidah@sas.edu.sg) In the note you can say something like

1)   My child can always have ice cream on Friday’s whether they have school lunch or home lunch

2)   My child can never have ice cream on Friday’s

3)   If my child has school lunch they can have it but not if they have home lunch

Then at least Aidah will know if we should use your child’s lunch card to buy them an ice cream or popsicle for a dollar.  Thank you so much for this!

*This Wednesday, September 13^th:  Alternate Dress Day/Library Day

*Friday, September 22^nd: Early Release Day—11:30 am Dismissal

*Thursday, October 12 and Friday, October 13: Parent Teacher Conferences

*October 16^th to 20^th: Fall Break—No School

*Please send in a family photo and a baby story. J

*Thank you to everyone sending in extra fruit, granola bars, crackers and snacks—the kiddos have been enjoying them, especially first thing in the morning!  Healthy snacks help our brains work better during the day, so thank you very much. J

Week 4 Sept 5 to 8

82 new photos · Album by Lynsey Howitt

Weekly Update August 31

Just a reminder that there is no school on Friday, September 1^st and Monday, September 4^th.

It was so wonderful seeing so many of you Wednesday night!  Thank you for coming!  I know you have had lots of information thrown at you during the past couple of weeks.  Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need any clarification.  The kiddos will LOVE to hear your messages of inspiration (we will read them out this coming week.  If for some reason you did not get to do one, let me know and I can send the paper home in your child’s zippy pouch or you can write one when you are here at school.)

This week we celebrated another birthday!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUSA!!!!

One point of interest…I have watched your cuties become more and more independent as the days have progressed! Really encourage your child to practice being independent at home as well.  Feeding themselves, starting to help dress themselves, doing up their bags, blowing their noses, and also starting to practice things like using safe scissors to cut will really help them out! J

This week some of our learning included…

*reading the book Mouse Paint (along with quite a few others such as A Color of His Own, Dog’s Colorful Day, Little Rabbit’s Color Book, and Pete the Cat (which has turned into a lot of singing! J) and finger painted with the three primary colors. Can your child tell you what they are? The kids pulled out a basket of color books and we just started reading and doing!!!!

*the kiddos were SO INTERESTED in mixing colors, that we are going to do a special experiment next week…. (we starting looking for the materials…)

*there was a wonderful discovery into our letters and sounds—some of us made name necklaces out of beads, some stamped letters into clay, some used letter stamps, some found different letters in books, there was pointing out of letters in books, making sounds for letters we saw…explosion of learning! We might have to go on a letter walk…

*we had a lot of building going on this week!  We had a group that moved from legos, to magnatiles, to blocks to castle blocks! One group decided to make a castle. J

*we talked about our families and will be presenting our family photos throughout next week.

*some of our students began making a playground for Mango and Oreo Cookie. It was interesting to watch the learners observe the pigs inside then cage and then wonder about what they would love to play with or on outside the cage. They also went to Ms. Harvey, one of the high school art teachers to ask for some supplies.

*we explored light at color using the light tables, overhead projectors, and screens.

*one of the trees on the playground had falling flowers—very interesting natural provocation with some interesting discussions!

And of course…much, much more! J

REMINDERS

*Friday, September 1^st: NO SCHOOL- Hari Raya

*Monday, September 4^th: NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS-Faculty Inservice

*Friday, September 22^nd: Early Release Day—11:30 am Dismissal

*Thursday, October 12 and Friday, October 13: Parent Teacher Conferences

*October 16^th to 20^th: Fall Break—No School

*Please send in a family photo and a baby story. J

*Thank you to everyone sending in extra fruit, granola bars, crackers and snacks—the kiddos have been enjoying them, especially first thing in the morning!  Healthy snacks help our brains work better during the day, so thank you very much. J

Week 3 August 28 to 31

70 new photos · Album by Lynsey Howitt

Beginning to Look at Identity

During morning connection time, I wondered with the students…”How can we get to know each other better?” “We have to look at each other because some of us were here at school last year and some were not,” Amelia said. “Yes, our eyes and hair is different,” Shulynne added. “And we have different names, of course. We are not the same so we need to know who everyone is.” The students decided to share their names again, and everyone in the circle was smiling. “You know, we are all happy too!” said ChengQian, throwing his hands up in the air. “I wonder how we are all special and how we are all different,” I said to the class, and there were some very thoughtful expressions.  

Later on in the day, I noticed some students looking carefully at each others’ faces, and Alisa began drawing a picture of herself. “This is me! Look at my face!” she told others. Quickly many of her classmates came over to join her in drawing, and I placed a mirror in front of them for reference. “I have black eyes!” exclaimed Yoonjin. “Me too!” said Rhea. “My eyes look when I am playing with my toys,” Harrison eagerly added. “I love to play with my toys! And all the things in school!” said Alisa. “Like books, and painting and drawing…and Mango and Oreo!” The conversation continued as students pointed out features on their face and body that were the same or different than others, as well as talking about interests and likes. We will see where this leads us next…

“It is through others that we develop into ourselves.”  Vygotsky