October in Middle Pre-Primary

Hello parents, loved ones, and visitors!

First of all, we’d like to thank everyone who prepared for and attended our sweet little party to celebrate the conclusion of our All About Me unit.  The children were s o  e x c i t e d  to host you in their classroom, and they worked hard to prepare their songs to share with you, including the world debut of Middle Pre-Primary’s original, “The Pickle Song”!  (The song has continued to get even more creative....today the pickles found themselves in "a dark night castle of a queen."  How do they come up with this?!) I hope you got a chance to chat with your child about their All About Me learning as well as to sample the snacks and goodies from around the world.  We absolutely loved having you here with us!

Earlier this month, we created our very original self-portraits out of paint, construction paper, yarn, glue, markers, and pencils.  This process took the children many days (and many glimpses into mirrors!).  Each of their portraits came out so sweetly unique – isn’t it amazing how we see ourselves?  We have also spent much time discussing where we come from.  The children are able to tell you which countries their friends are from and are beginning to recognize the flags of the countries that we represent. 

The children have been working so hard to recognize and read their names and the names of their friends.  They write their names on their artwork and create their own nametag each morning.  They use their nametags to pause their activities in the classroom in order to return to it later, and they are learning how important their name writing is!  We have seen such amazing progress in their abilities and I know they are feeling very proud of themselves.  We are moving along in our Jolly Phonics curriculum, and we have studied the letter sounds s , a , t , i , p , and n so far.  You can supplement your child’s learning at home with their letter sounds keychain and by playing I Spy games with your child as you are reading books together.  I talked to many of you during our parent teacher conferences about ways to read and learn with your child.  You can look through books, find familiar letters, and chat about the sounds you hear in books as you read.  Conversations like these help children develop their phonological awareness, and the children just love chatting about their letter sounds and finding them in their favourite books.

You have probably noticed that your child is bringing many paintings and pieces of artwork home these days.  The children have been really drawn to our busy art area over the past few weeks.  They have been experimenting with mixing paint colours, painting with different objects (acorns and peppers), cutting, using special hole punches, drawing faces on pumpkins, and digging through our paper scraps buckets to make creative boxes, robots, leopards, and more.  Our puzzle section is also a popular place for the children to learn.  Puzzles are an excellent tool for children to develop their visual discrimination and fine motor abilities, which help lay the foundation for children's literacy development.  We have also been counting up to fifty with our chestnut activity, sorting and counting pom poms and beans, and working to update our calendar daily.  We studied respect as one of our core ISG values, and the children brainstormed ways to be respectful at ISG.  You can read their very respectful ideas in the photo of our castle - what a sweet brainstorm from this group!  Needless to say, the children certainly stay quite busy in the classroom.

Finally, we had a fantastic Halloween celebration before autumn break.  We saw spooky witches, fancy princesses, daring warriors, dashing superheroes, and one very cute ladybug!  We walked the red carpet in our costumes in front of the whole school, had a dance party, ate too many sweets, carved our own Jack O'Lanterns, tasted roasted pumpkin seeds, and made some spooky decorations for our classroom.  Happy Halloween, and enjoy your autumn break!

Best,

Miss Sophie and Miss Marta