All about Clothes!

Hello everyone! First, I would like to welcome Sebastian, Ganesh and Miss Katerina to our class, they have all settled in wonderfully and have immediately become a part of our little school family.

To start the year off the children painted explosive firework paintings and wrote some very thoughtful new year’s resolutions. I hope they’ve been keeping them!

Following this we have had a very interesting, creative and knowledge rich study on ‘Clothes’. For our ‘entry point’  the children came to school dressed in their traditional clothes or clothes with the colours from their flag. We had a fun parade and enjoyed visiting the primary classes where the children had to guess our nationality!

To get interested in clothes and design each child made their own cut out doll which they dressed in clothes and material of their choice. This involved lots of patience cutting the material and then gluing it correctly on the body. The finished dolls looked lovely, some unusual pattern combinations but all unique and very personal!

The children learnt about clothes from different countries and learnt lots of new vocabulary – kimono, kilt, clogs, sarong, lederhosen. They tried on different clothes accessories. Thank you, Sebastian for bringing the sarong from Kenya for the children to try on.

The children loved the story of the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’. As a group work together, we painted a giant Emperor. He looked very royal!  We enjoyed reading several different versions of the story. Following this the children were inspired to act it out. They knew the story so well they needed little direction, volunteering lots of ideas and choosing their costumes. It was a wonderful activity and great fun!  The older children also drew pictures and wrote sentences to tell the story. Each child took a different part of the story to write about. From this story the children learnt about weaving. We looked at pictures of different looms and saw how material and carpets could be woven. We had a little mini loom in the class which the children could practice on. They also managed very well weaving with paper. The results were beautiful.

Following this work a big part of our study was about where clothes come from. At the beginning of the unit the children had little knowledge about where clothes come from and how they are made (‘from the shop’ was their main answer!).  They were very curious and interested to find out more. They learnt that their fleece jumper is made from plastic bottles, that cotton comes from the cotton plant, that linen comes from the flax plant, that silk comes from the silk moth. The made lovely life cycles of the silk moth. They have been investigating the labels on their clothes to check what they are made of. They discovered that most of their clothes are made of 100% cotton! I was very proud of the children at our last assembly as they presented all their learning about clothes to the whole school. They drew and painted pictures which they held to show while they spoke. They were very informative and spoke with loud voices. Super work!

Throughout our unit we have also celebrated special days – blue day, odd sock day, funky hat day. On the funky hat day, we turned our class into a ‘hat factory’ - the children were free to go as crazy as they wanted! We had some pretty nice results!

For our exit point we had a very special visit from the Police. They showed us their uniforms and talked about their work. They were very kind and answered the many questions the children had prepared. The children were very lucky, they tried on a police jacket and got to sit in a police car.

To completely end our unit on clothes we will celebrate on Friday with a carnival party. Happy holidays everyone! See you soon! Love Ms. Mia