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First I would like to give a warm welcome to our new friends who joined our class. Aura and Spandan, we are very happy to have you here in Lower Pre-Primary. I am already so proud of you both - you settled in quickly and are having so much fun at school.
Happy birthday to Anan, who turned 3 years old in October. Anan was so proud of his birthday crown and showed it to everyone at school! We had a wonderful birthday party with lots of singing, counting and jumping 3 times. Thank you for the yummy birthday cake!
The last weeks we have been busy learning about PATTERNS. It was a very exciting IPC unit. For our ‘entry point’ we had a fun pattern day where we came to school wearing clothes full of patterns.
During the unit we learnt about different types of patterns and what they look like.
We explored the patterns in our surroundings and went on a pattern exploration walk in and around our school. It was amazing how many different patterns we found together: the bricks of the wall, the pattern of a wheel, the pattern of the ground, the pattern of the trees and lots more. To remember our beautiful pattern walk we made a ‘pattern book’ with photographs we took on our walk. The children loved looking at it in our little classroom library!
We also designed our own patterns with lots of different colours and made a very special pattern frame. The children also had the opportunity to paint patterns on the easel, two children together, super teamwork! We also clapped patterns with our hands and made musical patterns using the instruments.
In our classroom we played various pattern games such as pattern memory and designing patterns.
We read the beautiful story about the wonderful, patchwork elephant ELMER. The kids loved the story, so we read the book several times! We discussed how we are all different, unique and wonderful, just like Elmer and all his friends. We made a beautiful Elmer artwork designing our very own Elmer with his colourful patterns. Each elephant is unique, different and beautiful just like all the children in our classroom! We also learnt the song “Elmer the patchwork elephant”. The children loved singing this song while moving like elephants and shouting ‘booooooo’, just like Elmer and his friends! For our Elmer artwork we made funny elephant photos using our arm as an elephant trunk, and in our role play area we could even dress up like an elephant. It was lots of fun and we laughed a lot. At the end of the unit each child got a special Elmer medal during our Elmer theatre ‘exit point’.
We have also been visiting our school library. We returned the books from our classroom and borrowed new ones. The children loved looking at the new books.
Another very exciting event in December was when Sinterklaas came to visit! We learnt a song for Sinterklaas (Hello good morning Sinterklaas, hello good morning Sinterklaas) and dressed up like little Sinterklaas with our beautiful Sinterklaas hat. The children were very excited and some of the children were even speechless!
And then, our Christmas show: The children loved our “Jingle bells” song, especially playing with the instruments and dancing around. We had lots of fun practicing for the show and performing. I hope you also enjoyed our Christmas show!
The children loved singing the song “We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new Year”. On this note I will end this blog article. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a great 2018!
See you in January!
Miss Riccarda
Dear everyone!
Is it me or have the last 5 weeks gone by very fast? But I guess time always goes fast when you’re having fun!
In the last blog you can read about the start of our IPC unit Houses and Homes. We continued the unit by being introduced to the story of the Three Little Pigs. Some of them knew the story, others didn’t! Everyone still enjoyed it very much. We got to know the three different types of material that are talked about in the story: straw, wood and brick. Using figurines we got to experiment with puppet play. The children were able to use the figurines of the story (the three pigs, the wolf, the different houses) to play the story for each other. We learned how to move the puppets and tell the story but also how to listen to each other and give applause.
Together we made our own brick house using little bricks and cement (flour and water). Using the pen grip we placed the bricks carefully onto each other and we put the right amount of cement in between (not too much, not too little). We had to be very careful and we were all concentrated doing it!
We got to celebrate Malin’s birthday by singing her birthday song, jumping to ‘three’ and we made her a nice crown! Happy Birthday Malin!
We also learned about different furniture that we can find in and around a house. We learned how to play the gme ‘Who What Where?’ that teaches us what items go where in the house. With all this in mind we designed our own house using a shoebox, paint, cutouts of furniture and anything else that the children wanted to use to personalize their house. The result was unique and lovely to see! We had a lot of fun doing it.
We got to explore different kind of shapes. With those shapes and glue we made more houses! We used our imagination, creativity and had to think about the composition of our houses. The children had a lot of fun doing it, seeing their houses come to life while sticking the shapes on the paper. After we finished the houses, the children came up with the idea to make a street where those houses would go on. Unlimited creativity in LPP! :)
We read two different books about animal homes. It taught us that different animals live in different types of homes according to their size and needs/habits. The ones the children liked the most were the spider and his spider web and the bat who lives in a cave!
We made spider webs by weaving rope and also a spider of course. The children came up with the idea to make a big tree so that we could hang up the spider webs we made. It was a big success! We learned the song Itsy Bitsy spider and we used instruments to play the song as well! I brought my guitar and we played music like a real band!
We practiced counting and recognizing numbers by counting spiders and finding their matching spider web. And also, how many legs does a spider have? We counted the legs and found out they have 8! With plasticine we made spiders with exactly 8 legs!
It was lovely to see that everybody in LPP came dressed up to school for our Halloween party. We had a ladybug, a fish (Dori), a monkey, a cow, a penguin, a pumpkin princess, a witch, a frozen princess (me) and a leprechaun (miss Anne)!
For our last activity together we made sugar cookies! Yum!!
I would like to thank all the parents for your trust, cooperation and many lovely gifts! I also want to thank the whole ISG team for making me feel like family during these 5 months. A special thank you to the Lower Primary teachers miss Anya, miss Mia and miss Inbal for all your support. Of course I also want to thank miss Anne and miss Reccarda for all your help!
I had a wonderful time and will miss everybody very much! I will come and visit soon.
Love
Miss Lori
Hello everyone!
What a great first three weeks it’s been! Welcome back Malin, Marceau and Anan. It was wonderful seeing you again. You all grew so much over the summer and I was happy to see you were very excited to be back at school. I also want to welcome Elize, Sally, Rachel, Arthur and Constantin to Lower Pre-Primary. Your journey at ISG has officially begun and we will have so much fun!
During our first two weeks we took our time to get to know each other and the routines in Lower Pre-Primary. We learned the songs that we sing during our morning circle time such as “Goodmorning” and “Sunday, Monday”. We also learned to sing “the wheels on the bus” and “pitter patter raindrops”.
One of the stories that we read was ‘Bye, Bye’ which talks about going to school and saying goodbye to mommy, daddy, grandma, grandpa, caretaker, etc. The story taught us about the different feelings that go hand in hand with saying goodbye and being at school! Turns out school is a lot of fun and saying goodbye is only for a little while :-)
‘Ladybug’, our class friend (mascot), is always there to give support when needed. He likes to say hello and give hugs.
We have experimented with paint, crayons, paper, scissors, pens and plasticine. We made puzzels, played with the fishing game and we learned how to play “memory”.
This past week we started our unit “Houses and Homes”. For the entry point we went to the gym and got to experiment with big building blocks, blankets, pillows, tents, etc. We made a house that had a separate kitchen, bedroom and living room! It was a lot of fun.
In our classroom we found a whole bunch of miniature furniture, but no house….. We came up with the idea to make our own house out of a cabinet. There was one thing missing though, the house did not have a roof. Together we made a roof out of cardboard, painted it and attached it to the house.
To practice our colours, we made a house using colour matching. The different sticks needed to build our house had coloured dots on them that matched with the lines on the paper. Together we named the different colours and tried to match the right stick with it’s matching colour! Afterwards we drew who lives in the house we made. The result was wonderful to see.
When Miss Anne came over on Thursday, she helped us building a real house with a roof in our classroom! The house even has a slide as an exit! How exciting! The new house gave the children a lot of new ideas for roleplay and we discussed the different dress-up clothes/options we have in our classroom. We love to dress up and play!
As the children are settling in well… I would like to thank you, the parents, for your trust, cooperation and brave “goodbye moments” in the morning. For some of the children it’s their first real school experience and it’s never easy leaving them behind. But always tell yourself… “How lucky am I, to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
Dear parents
What a wonderful last few weeks it has been. We continued our sand and water topic by making a big cozy sand and water corner in our classroom where we had the chance to look at fish, explore the sensory bottles and relax on the pillows.
One of our tadpoles turned into a froglet who soon turned into a frog. Everybody was very excited to see how fast the transformation went! Our frog was so tiny but very cute. We kept him for a few days until we returned him with all his other tadpole brothers and sisters to the pond they came from. After this frog adventure we had two students who came into our classroom to show us how real toads look like! We were able to feel them and even had them on top of our head! We leanred about the differences between a toad and a frog and it was very interesting.
We also learned about different kinds of seacreatues. We learned about what they look like, what they eat, and all the other characteristics. We each made our favourite seacreatues and put them on a big ocean frieze that we made ourselfs. After this we exprimented some more with different kinds of sand and made sand and glue artworks.
To take a break form our topic we had artweek! The children made a variety of artworks in miss Anya, miss Mia and my classroom. We made Aboriginal dot art using cotton swaps, paint and black paper. On the rhythm of real Aboriginal music we put dots on the paper. We had a lot of fun and putting the dots on paper was very relaxing.
After artweek we learned all about rain, clouds and what to wear when it’s rainy. We discovered different kinds of clothing/materials and what it means when something is waterproof. We made cloud and rain artworks and learned a new song! The song was called pitter patter raindrops and the song came with fun dance moves!
Soon after that we learned about boats. What do they look like? And why do we use them? Together with this we learned about sinking and floating and did some experiments on this topic.
Of course… we can’t learn about boats without mentioning pirates!
Together we discovered the story of the pirates and the sea monster. The pirate ship sunk to the bottom of the ocean because the seamonster bit a big hole in the ship! The pirates had to swim to shore and the parrot luckily was able to fly away. The parrot came to our classroom on Monday and told us all about it. We made our own boats and pirates hats! To finish our pirates topic, a real pirate came to our classroom who wanted his parrot back! In exchange for the parrot the children were given a treasure chest with cookies inside. We had lots of fun!
In between all this we continued to practice our cutting skills. We also worked on our fine motor skills by learning how to use tweezers to pick up things. And finally we practiced holding a pencil.
Everybody was very excited when Ms Inbal came to our classroom to visit us with sweet baby Ben. The children came up with the idea to hide in our sand and water cozy corner to trick Ms Inbal into thinking they were gone! When she came inside they said ’surprise!!’. We sat with her and talked about the baby and how everybody has been since she left. We gave her many hugs!
We also celebrated Sebatians and Yagos birthday! Congratulations to you two and thank you for the wonderful treats.
During the last two weeks we opened up a shop in our classroom where we sold shells, rubber ducks, and other small items. We learned how to buy and sell, we payed with money and used the cash register. They all enjoyed it very much.
We had our sand and water exit point on a very hot day! All morning we played in paddling pools, water slide and played water games. We played with waterballoons and had a boat race using our own boats we made out of foam clay. Woohoo!
Finally, we had to say goodbye to Teagan who is going back to the United Stated of America and to Loic who is moving to Canada! We wish you both the best of luck with this new adventure and we will miss you all very much. We hope to see you again some day and don’t forget to send us some mail!
I want to say a big thank you to Ms Anne, Ms Reccarda and Ms Esti for helping out in LPP!
And fnally want to wish you all a lovely summer holiday and see you in September!!
Big hug
Ms Lori
Another few weeks passed in Lower Pre-Primary and the summer is approaching! After the Easter holiday we were lucky to welcome Malin from Sweden and Anan from China. Welcome to ISG and we hope you have fun learning and growing at our school.
The first two weeks after the holiday we spent time getting to know each other and had a ‘unit free’ time. We did all sorts of painting including water and fingerpainting. We practiced our cutting skills and even painted with balloons! We played games where we learned the colours and what happens when we mix them. We also practiced the numbers and counting using fun blow-up numbers and blocks.
In the beginning of May we started our new IPC unit Sand and Water. Our entry point was a big success! We had a sand and water day in the classroom where trays were set up to engage experimenting and exploring with different kinds of sand, water, mud and toys.
Thanks to Sebastian and his family we were lucky to get some tadpoles in our classroom! We learned about the lifecycle of frogs and learned a song about five little speckled frogs:
Five little speckled frogs sat on a speckled log
Eating some delicious bugs, yum, yum!
One jumped into the pool where it was nice and cool
Now there are four green speckled frogs!
We made frog headbands and jumped around the classroom as frogs! As the tadpoles will grow we will keep an eye on how they change and wait (im)patiently for them to transform intro frogs.
We learned about the words ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ and what they mean. We blew bubbles outside and made bubble art! In the mystery box we had sandpaper that we discovered and felt. We even made art with the sandpaper! Together we came up with the idea to change the house corner in the classroom into a relaxing underwater cave with different sensory play items with sand and water. This is still under construction as we still have to make some decorations! To be continued…. :-)
Lots of love
Lori
Over the last few weeks we have been busy learning more about clothes. We had a ‘funky hat day!’ which was great fun! We saw different types of hats from all around the world. The summer hat from Vietnam was very light and we could fold it and put it in a bag. The winter hat from the USA was very soft and warm; it covered our ears to protect us from the cold weather. We had a very special hat from Nigeria which was actually a crown worn by the Yoruba chiefs in Nigeria. It was colourful and heavy, full of tiny beads. Thank you all for sharing those beautiful hats with us.
On that day all children designed their own special hat. They chose the materials, the colours and the shape they wanted. The results were beautiful! We read the story ‘caps for sale’ and acted it out in class. Miss Inbal was the peddler and the kids were the little monkeys
We have been learning about the routine of getting dressed. What we should put on first and last and why. We played a mime game in which a child was pretending to put on trousers, gloves, socks, a hat or a shirt and we had to guess what it was. We talked about the importance of keeping our clothes clean and had a great time washing all our babies' clothes in our family corner. We observed the colour of the water before and after washing the clothes and we noticed that the water became dirty. We also learned that wet clothes are heavier than dry clothes. We hung the clean clothes outside, developing our fine motor skills while using pegs. It was lovely to see how the kids cooperated and worked so nicely together as a team. Well done everyone!
We read the story ‘The emperor’s new clothes’. The kids enjoyed the play upper pre-primary performed, it was lovely!
We also learned about clothes that people wear for special jobs. Then we had a nice visit from the local police. They showed us their clothes and the objects they carry, and they even took the kids for a short ride in the police van!
The children designed their own T-shirts and our ‘exit point’ for the clothes unit was a lovely fashion show with all pre-primary classes. The kids walked on the red carpet, so proud of their t-shirts. It was a fantastic afternoon!
Apart from the work on clothes, we have also learnt about morality. We watched a puppet show and used a traffic light to explain how important it is to stop (red light), think (orange light) and make the right choice (green light). Lately the children have been trying to use morality very often, you can use this value at home too!
We enjoyed making gifts for our families for valentine’s day which we hope you liked. We finished the week with a lovely carnival full of costumes, music and dance.
On Friday, it was Grayson’s last day at ISG. We would like to wish Grayson and his family all the best in the USA. Grayson came to our class two months ago, it was a short but meaningful time. We will miss sweet Grayson and we hope he will come back to visit us in the future.
Have a lovely holiday everyone!
Hello everyone,
First, I would like to give a warm welcome to four new friends who joined our class. Grayson, Sebastian, Stefan and Teagan, we are very happy to have you in LPP. You are a sweet addition to our lovely group.
We were happy to celebrate Alexander’s birthday. Alexander turned 4 and we wish him all the best! Thank you for the delicious cake, the beautiful balloons and the yummy fruit.
Over the last few weeks, we have been enjoying our new IPC unit - Clothes. We had a great ‘Entry Point’ for which all children came to school wearing the colours of their national flag or traditional clothes from their home countries. We had a grand parade with colours and songs from all over the world. We created a new corner in class full of clothes and costumes. The children love to try them on and play so nicely pretending they are doctors, princesses, pirates, firefighters, etc.
We love listening to new stories about clothes and we increase our vocabulary. We play games related to clothes such as sorting clothes by colour, size and shape. We learnt about our body parts and then opened a big box full of clothes; we worked together to decide which item to put on our heads, necks, hands, legs and feet. We learnt about summer and winter clothes and then created our own winter hats and mittens, using different art materials.
Every week we have a special day related to clothes. So far, we have had a ‘blue day’ and an ‘odd sock day'. Both days were a great success! On blue day, we all came to school dressed in blue, we had a sport lesson using only blue equipment, we made our own blue art and we tried to make the longest line using only blue clothes. The kids were happy to discover that our line was very long - we counted 25 steps! Well done everyone. Team work makes the dream work! On odd sock day all kids painted odd socks, we played a game in which our target was to find as many pairs of socks as we could, we pegged socks and counted them, it was a lovely day!
Have a lovely weekend everyone,
Miss Inbal.
Dear Parents,
Over the last few weeks, lower pre-primary pupils have been busy learning about food, the autumn season, personal goals and Christmas.
Our entry point for the ‘Food unit’ was fun. All the children brought some fruit they like and a cutting board. We chopped up all the fruit and made a big fruit salad and pancakes. We all enjoyed our delicious homemade morning snack!
During our food unit we created our own café and learned how to sort food in different categories such as colour and size. They all had a great time playing in the café corner, pretending to be mum, dad, a chef or a waiter. We improved our counting skills by counting fruit, vegetables, desserts and more. We learned about healthy and unhealthy food and read beautiful stories about food. The kids even performed in our ‘The enormous turnip’ play, which was great fun!
Learning about food was a lovely opportunity for us to make food art. We looked at photos of mandalas, discussed patterns, and then created our own mandala out of dry food. The children chose their favourite food, and then created their mandala out of different materials. We smelled, touched and tasted different vegetables and even made a stamp using a lemon!
Every now and then we have a nice activity with our ‘buddy class’- Lower Primary. Our last activity was to invite them to our class for some orange juice and cookies, which we made ourselves. We sang together and listened to a story about food. We had a blast!
Our exit point was a great success. The kids were super excited on our first trip to a local café. We took with us some Christmas decorations that we had made in class, and Ria, the nice lady who owns the café, treated us to orange juice, chocolate milk and a homemade cake.
We also learned about the autumn season. We learned to recognise the different signs of autumn and looked at some autumn tree paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Afterwards we drew our own autumn tree, with our little fingers. The kids were very happy to go outside and observe real autumn leaves. We then raked the leaves to make a big pile which we all jumped into!
We also celebrated Andreea and Sammi’s birthday. They both turned 3. We would like to wish them happy birthday again and thank them for the yummy cakes they brought.
Last week was all about Christmas. We made Christmas decorations, sang songs and were very happy to celebrate the Christmas fair with our parents.
Have a lovely winter break, full of great moments with your family and friends. See you all in 2017.
Happy New Year!
Over the last few weeks, lower pre-primary pupils have been busy learning more about family and friends.
We learnt about tall and small by looking at photos and sorting them into groups. Following this, the children looked at their own family photos and decided who is the tallest and the smallest in their family. We also discussed daily routines in our families and played a mime game. Each child chose one action and showed it to the others without talking (eating breakfast/ getting dressed/ going to school etc). The children had a great time trying to guess!
Over the last couple of weeks we have also read all kinds of stories about families. Some of our favourites were - “Spot visits his grandparents”, “The Family book” and ”I love you through and through”.
Last week we had a lovely ‘Exit Point’. The children were so happy to make vanilla muffins for their parents. For some of them it was their first experience being little chefs!
All children helped to set a nice table for the parents. We counted plates, napkins and cups and decorated our table with some autumn leaves that we collected together in the playground.
I would like to thank all the parents that came to celebrate with us it was so nice to sing together, listen to stories (thanks to Lital’s dad and to Loic’s mum!) and to eat the yummy muffins.
Our first personal goal for the year is ‘respect’. The children enjoyed watching a puppet show to try and understand what respect means. We decided that it is very important to show respect to people, toys, books and animals. We try to encourage respect all the time in Lower Pre-Primary!
Over the last week we had fun getting ready for our Halloween party. We sang songs, read stories and made friendly spiders for Halloween. We celebrated with lots of music and dancing, delicious food and a nice movie for Halloween (‘Room on the broom’).
I wish you all a great Autumn holiday. Enjoy your family and friends and I look forward to seeing you all after the break.
