Plants and Flowers and Up and Away!

The school year has come to an end, but what a truly amazing year we have had in Upper Pre-Primary. The children have grown so much, in many ways and became a real little class family. We have shared so many special moments together. Since our last blog about ‘Animals’ we have had two more units - ‘Plants and Flowers’ and ‘Up and Away’.

During our ‘Plants and Flowers ‘study we created our very own special garden in the classroom. The children took care of the plants and enjoyed sitting in the garden to talk and read books about nature. It was a very cosy place indeed! The children planted many seeds and watched their plants grow. They drew and painted flowers, learnt about the needs of a plant, learnt about pollination and like real scientists they each did a flower dissection. We read the story of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and the children had lots of fun, taking turns acting out the story.

We started off our unit ‘Up and Away’ with a super ‘entry point’ – a trip to Australia – involving a flight, a safari, and a sleepover! There was so much preparation – making the plane, passports, boarding passes and learning about Australia. The children were so excited to bring their little suitcases, with their pyjamas to school! It really felt like we had gone on a journey together that day! During the unit, the children had fun playing in the aeroplane, taking turns to be the pilots, flight attendants and passengers!

The children have been super creative making all sorts of ‘up and away’ objects. They also made kites and learnt all about hot air balloons. As the children made so many beautiful things, we decided to make a museum and invite the other classes to visit. What a proud moment for all the children! During our study, the children were also very curious to learn about space, rockets, and the solar system. They loved laying out the planets in their correct order on our black space mat! There has been lots of songs about space, but their favourite song was ‘Up, up, up’. They are constantly singing in the class as they work! So lovely to hear! For our exit point, we ended with a big ‘bubble event’ which we celebrated with Lower Pre-Primary.

We also enjoyed a wonderful sports day with Lower Pre-Primary with all kinds of races and a little picnic.

The children love learning about nature and bringing all sorts of insects to the class. Due to their interest in ladybirds. they made beautiful life cycle charts of the ladybird. We have also had the amazing opportunity this year to have tadpoles in our class and watch them develop into little frogs. But what was so amazing to see was how our little caterpillar friend changed into a cocoon and then after three weeks watching him in his cocoon, last Friday he emerged as a beautiful moth. It was incredible, he could hardly fly in the beginning and stayed for a long time crawling along Andrew, who stayed very still.

The last days of school were celebrated with the Wacky Olympics. The children participated in all the events and had lots of fun. I was very proud of them.

Unfortunately, the school year has come to an end, and we have to say good-bye to Sally, Luigi, Giulia and Marco who are leaving Belgium and to Inigo, Kezhen, Suzumi, Andrew, Alek and Daksh who are going to Primary and to Mr. Romain who is leaving! We will really miss them in Upper Pre-Primary, but we will never forget them. Have a wonderful summer everyone and I look forward to seeing Stan,Yoni, Alba, Hargun, Aya and Bruno in September.

Love Ms. Mia