January and February in Middle Pre-Primary

First of all, welcome back from the holiday break!  It has been a while since the last blog, and of course there is much to catch up on in the Middle Pre-Primary classroom.  We were so excited to welcome five new friends into our classroom – Matthew, Shreeya, Srinithi, Maali, and Rayaan.  The children wondered what their new friends would be like.  What countries to do they come from?  What languages do they speak?  Will they speak English?  How do they spell their names?  Our new friends have brought much energy and joy into our space and we are so happy that they’re here.  Welcome to ISG!

We also welcomed lovely Miss Aurora into MPP.  She came all the way from Finland and was such a sweet, warm presence in our classroom.  She has moved up the stairs and is now helping Miss Erica’s Year 1 classroom, and we are happy that we still get to say hi to her often on the playground!  Our very own Miss Marta is back with us these days and we couldn’t be happier to have her in the classroom.  Her fun-loving energy, never-ending patience, and colourful creativity make MPP a more joyful place.  Welcome back, Miss Marta! 

In January we began our Let’s Pretend IPC unit by bringing in our favourite stories from home and dressing up as a character from our books.  We were princesses and Tinkerbells, superheroes and butterflies, knights and pirates.  We even had a very excited Krishna!  We paraded around ISG to show off our costumes, read our stories together, and went upstairs to visit our big Primary friends and chat about our books. We spent the unit making sock puppets, retelling fables and fairy tales, putting on performances, and getting creative with our imaginations.

Miss Marta and I set up an area in the classroom that we envisioned as a theatre for puppet performances, but the children had a different idea – to them, it was clearly a ticket booth where you had to purchase tickets to see their performances.  So…we have a ticket booth!  If you’re in our classroom these days, you’ll probably hear a child calling “Tickets, tickets!” and you should hurry to the ticket booth to get your purple ticket for the upcoming show, which will always receive rave reviews and shouts of “BRAVO!” from the crowd.  It is quite a confidence boost to give a performance for such an enthusiastic audience, and we certainly don’t have any concerns about stage fright in MPP : )   The children’s shows are often story retellings using puppets or small objects (favourite stories include Eric Carle’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and The Three Little Pigs). 

We ended up creating our own small theatre for puppet shows.  Miss Marta worked with the children to convert a plain cardboard box into a magical theatre where Dominga’s special Chilean finger puppets make appearances (thank you for the sweet puppets, Virginia and Cristian!).  The children have loved stepping outside of their own identities to pretend to be someone else, and their dramatic play has been so fun and silly.  They’ve made puppets out of straws, popsicle sticks, and socks, and their creativity has really shined. 

We took a vote to figure out which story to perform for our Lower Pre-Primary and Upper-Pre-Primary friends, and we chose The Three Little Pigs.  We read the story, practiced huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, and retold the story in our own words.  Once we were familiar with the story, we brainstormed what props and costumes we would need to create for our play.  Before we knew it, we had three pig houses and plenty of pig and wolf masks.  As part of our exit point this week we performed our version of the Three Little Pigs with Constantin as our narrator.  After we performed, the children chanted "AGAIN! AGAIN!"  They truly loved acting out the pig and wolf roles and playing parts in our theatre production.  We also enjoyed a special puppet show last week.  A professional puppeteer told us a lively story about a cat who wanted to play with his pet goldfish, so he went on a long journey to find goggles and a snorkel.  Ask your child to tell you about these shows – we all had a great time! 

We celebrated Matthew and Dominga’s birthday over the past few weeks.  The children absolutely love to party – just mention the words “birthday party” and suddenly the classroom is tidy, the tables are arranged, and the children are sitting down, ready for cake and endless rounds of “Happy Birthday”.  So we’ll say it one final time…happiest of birthdays to our two friends!

The last thing I'll mention is something very exciting...the postman dropped off a very special package addressed to us, coming all the way from America.  It was from our penpals!  They wrote back to us and answered all of our questions about Maine, the state in America where they live.  They sent us chocolate covered blueberries and maple syrup and lots of photos.  The children are thrilled to have their very own penpals.  Now we'll get to work, writing our answers back and brainstorming a few more fun things to send to our new friends across the world.  If you have any ideas of sweet things to send, let me know!  They loved the Scottish shortbread and Belgian chocolate that we sent to them with your help :)

In other fun news, the children have insisted on singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” every day since returning from the holidays, we baked delicious cookies for Valentine's Day (and clearly made silly faces in the photos!), and a very secret colouring club has begun and takes place at the red tables by the windows.  Our days are full and fun and very, very silly.  As always, it’s a pleasure to work with these little ones!

Wishing you a great break with plenty of sunshine…

Best,

Miss Sophie and Miss Marta