First 8 weeks of school...

Welcome to Lower Primary Blog!  

8 weeks have flown by and our new routines are slowly but surely falling in place. These past 2 months the class has been focusing on two very important values: Respect and Resilience. It is amazing how we are starting to see our young students becoming more independent and responsible.  We are very proud of them.

Having fun while we learn is the best potion, and so far we have managed to make magic in lower primary! 

We started off the year learning about our brain and how we best learn. We understood that our brain is malleable, and that the connectivity between neurons can change with experience. We also explored having and developing a Growth Mindset, to help us navigate when things get a bit hard or tricky. Having a growth mindset helps us to embrace challenges! We also discovered the power of the word “YET”. (Check out more pictures about our learning on seesaw)

A few weeks ago, we started a new IPC unit called “Seeing the light”. We have been exploring lots of facts about light and how it is connected to us and to our world.

Learning about what light is and how it travels, the children explored the spectrum of light. They did an experiment using a crystal prism to see how the light diffracts showing the 7 colours of the visible spectrum. Lower primary created scientific models to explain their understanding. Year 2 students wrote a short text to complete their model. If you have not seen it yet, check the cool short movie about these activity on seesaw!

Fireworks!!!. We explored the world of Fireworks and made connection between celebrations-light-art. We made a list of words to describe shapes and patterns of the different fireworks to create a poem. 

To represent the fireworks, we used two different art techniques: Stamping with acrylic paint, and wax crayons under black ink. Our vibrant firework display is hanging proudly at school, have you seen it yet? 

As a class we also discussed and learned about sources of light, the children could immediately agree that our main source of light is our mighty sun. Therefore, we studied the fascinating relationship of the Sun and Earth. We made models to understand that earth rotates about its axis once every 24 hours, creating day and night. We used a shoe box, colour paper, styrofoam balls, wooden sticks, and glue. Pay us a visit and the kids will show you their models and how they work. 

Shadows are made when light is blocked, Lower primary explored some art techniques to draw shadows. Using a lamp and a ball we carefully looked where the shadow is casted, where is light in the object and what is the difference between light and dark areas. Ms Maija showed us how to create shadow and light drawings using charcoal pencils, it wasn`t easy, but showing resilience we were able to have good results! 

In one of our art activities the children met the work of André Kertész. He was a famous photographer from Hungary, his passion was to capture shadows in everyday life moments. 

Lower primary wore a photographer’s hat for a day and took some pictures inspired by the work of this renown photographer. There is a charming short film on seesaw showcasing this activity. 

One of our last activities was to learn about nocturnal animals and how they have adapted to the darkness. Every student chose a nocturnal animal and did some research about it to create a fact file. We learned so much about, foxes, bats, sharks, wombats, racoons, possums, owls, sloths, badgers, red-eye frogs…. In fact they are all walking/flying/hanging pompously on a display in our school!  

In November many people will be celebrating Diwali, which is the festival of light. In class we explored this fascinating celebration and explored different aspects of it. We explored the rangoli patters and created our own in the playground and Rayaan`s family shared with us some delicious Indian sweets and crackers. Look at some pictures of our small Diwali celebration on seesaw. 

Everybody has been working very hard learning and improving their literacy and numeracy skills. There has been spelling tests and numeracy tests… all these new to our younger students, so I must say, well done everybody for adapting so well to this new environment in primary. 

We have been practicing our reading twice a week, reading one on one on our guided reading sessions, and Ms Narissa has been creating a wonderful atmosphere implementing the Daily 5 literacy program.

On Friday we celebrated Halloween! We had a super fun party together with Upper Primary and then we had a lovely time sharing poems and songs with Pre-Primary students! 

Thank you everybody for sharing with us super yummy snacks and for dressing up , everybody was looking great!

Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to Suzumi.

Suzumi is a wonderful and kind friend and a remarkable student, we will miss you and we wish you all the best in your new adventures in Japan. Remember that you will always have a place back here in ISG! 

Enjoy your autumn break! Stay safe and enjoy your wonderful children,

Ms Julieta