Winter Surprise The children walked into Kindergarten on Monday to find out that it had "snowed" over the weekend! They were very surprised to find the classroom still dark with cotton snow all over the floor and their winter clothes laid out on the table! They had to sign in their name using shaving cream snow and really enjoyed making snow angels and having a gentle snowball fight. Can you build a snowman? Ms. Bustamante prepared three different types of "snow" for the children to play with. Her instructions were to build a snowman. The children discussed which snow was easiest to build with, and the children who had experienced snow before said that shaving foam mixed with baking soda made the most realistic snow. Melting Snowmen There was a lot of discussions this week on what would actually happen if it snowed in Singapore. Some of the students claimed it would just melt because Singapore is too hot! So we made melting snowmen, and came up with many creative reasons as to why our snowmen melted. The children really used their thinking skills to come up with creative ideas such as:
Hot Chocolate and Winter Poems with our Buddies During our buddy session with the Grade 2 class this week we really enjoyed sipping on hot chocolate, and learning about what a poem is. We even made winter themed poems with the guidance of our buddies! In Ms. Bustamante's classroom, we used our fine motor skills to carefully craft an edible marshmallow snowman! Fruit Salad Wow, it was so amazing to have such a variety of fruits for our salad today! We really enjoyed exploring all the different "suitcases" and seeds! We found some seeds were tiny and there was a lot, some seeds were hidden deep inside the fruit, and some fruits had big seeds called stones! The salad was so delicious and some of us had second and third helpings. Festive Friday
0 Comments
Autumn Investigation As we have no Autumn season in Singapore, the children were lucky enough to have a surprise package all the way from Europe! This package included real oak leaves, maple leaves, chestnut leaves, conkers, and walnuts that had fallen on the ground during Autumn in Austria. We had an investigation into these Autumn artefacts and used our senses to describe the items. The children made connections to the conkers looking like chestnuts, and some had eaten walnuts and pumpkins before at home. While they didn’t use the sense of “taste” to try anything, they use magnifying glasses to look at the items in detail and thoroughly used their sense of touch to explore the items further. Mixing Leaves Further connecting the life cycle of a leaf, and the many colours we find them during Summer, Spring and Autumn, the children used their senses to mix paint together to make colourful leaves. They used descriptive language to describe the process of the paint mixing, and used their fine motor skills to mix it all together. Trip to Preston We had such a great trip to visit the Preston campus to see where our school will be next year. The children enjoyed looking for birds, looking at the library and of course eating pizza!
Seasons of the Year Thank you to all who sent in seasons themed Show and Tells. The children were very excited to talk about their experiences and connections they make at home. This week I asked them to collect sticks and leaves from outdoors so we could make trees in different seasons using natural materials. We looked at what trees look like during the different seasons, and identified that we would need green leaves, yellow leaves, orange leaves and red leaves to show all the seasons. However, once we came back and sorted our leaves into different colours, we realised we had lots of yellow and green, but no orange or red! It was decided that this is because there is no Autumn in Singapore as there is in other countries. Kindergarten also collaborated with Visual Arts to learn about the life cycle of a leaf. What does it mean to be caring? The 'What does is mean to be caring?' video was presented during our school assembly today. The Kindergarteners were so proud and received great responses. Please enjoy the video below. Multiple literacies: making a garden out of loose parts We have been so lucky to explore plants in many different ways. We've explored plants during art lessons, labelled plants in Science, wrote and drew pictures of plants during writing time, and today we decided to make a garden out of loose part materials in the classroom! It's so wonderful to see the children authentically learning through multiple ways.
Living Things: Plants In addition to our unit on living things, we have been diving deeper into plants during Science lessons. We have been learning that plants grow both above and below the ground! Therefore we planted some plants that grow above; tomatoes and green beans, and plants that grow below; onions! These plants have already started growing so much. We had fun decorating our cups so we can easily spot our own plants. As well as making papier mache fruits and vegetables to teach those who walk past which plants grow above the ground and below the ground. We are Caring and Kind We've spent a lot of time focusing on what it means to be caring these last couple of weeks. Being caring is one of our learner profiles, which every IB learner strives to be. We discussed what makes a good friend, as well as the importance of using kind words. We learned about Pompom words, which are words that make you feel happy, make you smile and are kind. We also discussed Sandpaper words, which are words that "scratch" your feelings, like sandpaper scratches things, these are unkind words that make you feel bad. In addition to this, we've made a video in collaboration with some of Grade 1 on 'What Does it Mean to be Caring?' The video is still a work in progress, but you can view preview screenshots of the video here. Shaving Cream Fun
Deepavali We continued our inquiry into how cultures express themselves through celebration by learning a little more about Deepavali/Diwali. First we explored the celebrations display that showed us many features of Deepavali, and next we added to the Elementary School's collaborative mandala rangoli in the playground. We also tried some yummy Indian food, Vada, that people often eat during Deepavali. Finally, we listened to a presentation about our friend's experience and how he celebrates Deepavali/Diwali at home. Sharing The Planet While the celebrations unit is running all year, we started to inquire into our new unit: Sharing the Planet. The central idea is cycles affect the behaviour of living things. But before we could start to unpack what that means, we had to learn about what living things were! We made a lot of connections to our Science units, and how we learned about birds and plants and that they were both living things. Next we went for a walk around the school to spot living and non-living things. Flowers Inspired by our lessons on living things and plants, we explored Heritage Time this week through flowers. We learned how to say and write flowers in our mother tongues, made a collage out of real petals and developed our fine motor skills by rolling and making flower imprints on clay.
|
AuthorWe are a class of 4-6 year olds at an international school in Singapore! We learn by playing, inquiring and having fun. Our teacher is Ms Bustamante, and this is our learning journey! Archives
June 2020
Categories |