North Pole Rock and Roll!!!!!!!!

Do you wanna Rock at the North Pole??
I  was so proud of the way your children performed today at the Holiday Program. They sang the song over and over and never seemed to get tired of it. I was also really impressed at their behavior when sitting for so long on the stage. I have a few photos in the online photo album and you can see them here. You are welcome to send me more and I'll add them (email me 2 or 3, or put them on a thumb drive.)

Allison and Frank

We are sad to be saying goodbye to Allison next  Friday as she leaves us to move back to California. She is a hard-working girl who always smiles! 
Frank left us several weeks ago, and was hoping to return, but due to his father's health issues, they will stay in San Diego. Goodbye Frank - and we wish your Dad the best as he recovers.

Thank you
Thank you so much for the generous Christmas gift! In case you don't know, it was iTunes vouchers which is fantastic. Now I'll be able to watch very important things on my iPad like Grey's Anatomy!!
Have a wonderful, restful holiday. I leave tonight to attend our youngest daughter's graduation in New Zealand. I'm also looking forward to our summer - it should be nice and warm, but our summers are very unpredictable!
Mrs. Pat Liew will be teaching the class next week. If you need to send messages to the classroom, email Lyn at evelyn@sas.edu.sg 
I will see your children again on January 9 when we start at 10am.


Debbie

Movie stars

Mr Palmer is filming lots of classes on the theme of "Happiness". Here is our contribution to his film. Hollywood will be calling us soon!!! The beginning and ending are not supposed to be there - but I don't know how to edit movie clips on this camera!! 

Getting older....

THANK YOU - THANK YOU - THANK YOU!!

Getting older is not something we look forward to, and entering a new decade of numbers is tough, but celebrating my birthday with 1st Graders makes me feel young! Thank your for the cupcakes, cards, photos and the very generous gift. I will enjoy the Amazon Gift card because I love to read on my Kindle. 

You can see more photos here.

Have a great Thanksgiving. Your child has a poem that could be read out before your Thanksgiving dinners.

Thank you again, 

Debbie

November 18

Hygiene Kits for Cambodia

Thank you for your donations to the hygiene kits for Cambodia. This children really enjoyed packing the kits and talking about life in a poor country. Thanksgiving is a perfect time  to do this activity because it makes our children incredibly thankful for their own lives. I delivered some hygiene kits to Cambodia 2 years ago. The looks on the faces of the people when they received a hygiene kit each will stay with me forever. 

Each hygiene kit has toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, washcloth and an instruction card, made by the children.

Birthdays Cole and Max celebrated their 7th birthdays this week.

 

Chinese photos
The students have been learning to name and describe the parts of the face and body.  Their photos were uploaded here


Science

During the study of motion, the children have made spinning tops and zoomers. We talked about the force needed to start a spinner or zoomer. Here are a few photos:

Using a PUSH force to start the top spinning

Using a PULL force to start the zoomer

Book Fair

We will be going to the Elementary Gym to look at the PTA Book Fair on Monday November 21^st , 12:50-1:20.   You have these options if you want your child to buy books:

1.              Meet your child at the gym at 12:35 to buy books together.

2.              Send cash in a labeled envelope with your child’s name and amount of money. The amount is up to you. Some parents send $10. Others send $20 or more.

3.              Take your child to the book fair after school

Lots of Videos

For this blog entry you have lots of video clips to watch. The first one is a YouTube video I made of our Halloween party, After that, you can see videos made by each child about life in 1st Grade. You can also see many more Halloween party photos here. Enjoy!

Allison:

Grace:

Amanda:

Aran:

Archie:

Cole:

Erica:

Julia

Julie

Kai

Max

Noah

Sandy

Xander

Zoe

Holly

Jemma

Jia Feng

Samantha

Alex

Vittal

So much to celebrate!!

There has been so much going on lately! Here's a quick recap - and you can of course see lots  of photos in the online photo albums

Conferences - thanks for the excellent attendance at the conferences. I was very proud of the children. Many of you expressed surprise at the children's honest evaluation of themselves as they set their goals. It was a great process to go through.

Diwali Presentation

Vittal's mother and sister did a presentation about Diwali which included a fantastic shadow puppet play about the story of Prince Ram.They also shared some of their other family traditions for the Diwali holiday. The kids ADORED the sweet treats too (crushed Marie Biscuits mixed with condensed milk and rolled into balls). You can see more photos of the presentation here.

Little India Field Trip

The Little India field trip was wonderful. It's a great time to go when it's so colorful with all the decorations for Diwali. If you get a chance, go there at night too when it is all lit up. Thanks to the many parents who joined us. 

The children spent their $2 on peacock feathers, diyas (clay lamps) and Diwali greeting cards, then went to a restaurant to try poori. Many children were doubtful that they would like it, but today they are telling me that it was the best food ever! After ringing the bells at the temple, they were off to the Tekka market to look at all the flowers, vegetables, meat, fish etc for sale. The highlight for some children was that they got to touch a baby shark there. 

Photos of our field trip to Little India are here

Pumpkin Patch
Yesterday afternoon we visited the Pumpkin Patch to have a class photo taken, listen to a Halloween story and choose 2 small pumpkins and one gourd each. The Halloween witch looked just like Mrs. Donaghey! You can see Pumpkin Patch photos here

Listening to the Halloween story at the Pumpkin Patch

 

Math Patterns

The children have been enjoying making a variety of patterns lately. They often grab the camera and take photos of their own work. Here is a small sampling of them in this album

Jia Feng made a tessellating pattern

Frank  is away for a month while his Dad has major surgery in USA. We hope Tony is recovering well and look forward to them all returning next month.

It's no secret that I have been excited about New Zealand's efforts in the Rugby World Cup. On Monday, after our big win over Australia, I made a reading exercise for the children to complete. Can you do it?

To help us celebrate, Kaye Bach brought her Pre-K class to sing and dance a Maori song from New Zealand for us. You can see a small portion of it in this video:

United Nations Day

United Nations Day

( You can click on any picture in the blog to make them larger.)

Don't we all look wonderful? What a colorful class we had today in gorgeous costumes. 

OUR CLASS IS LIKE THE
UNITED NATIONS BECAUSE...

We come from 11 different countries
 9 children can speak 2 languages
 We are learning how to speak Chinese
We share and work together peacefully
We care about others
We care about the world
We help people if they are hurt

At the United Nations Day assembly we learned a little about life in different countries, how things have changes so much in the last 50 years, and ways to help make our world a better, happier place.

74 flags were paraded, representing the countries the children in the Primary School and ECC come from. 

We also watched a man called Matt who danced his way around the world. Here's the video clip:

After the assembly we had an incredible feast in the classroom. Parents supplied food from countries such as Angola, China, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Ukraine, India, Japan, Canada, Italy, Korea, Hong Kong and USA.  Children had to 'go around the world' sampling food and getting stickers from each country in their passports. It's amazing how they will try new foods if they can get a sticker for it!!
Thanks to the parents for the yummy food, and for helping us celebrate today.
There are many more UN Day photos here.

What else have we done this week?
Zoe's Mom taught us about Rosh Hashanah. The children decided that slices of apple dipped in honey was fantastic! We also loved the special bread for Rosh Hashanah, shaped like a clock, symbolizing the passing of time.

More Rosh Hashanah photos here.

Sandy's Mom came in to read a story about the Statue of Liberty, and we had more food! The star-shaped sugar cookies, colored red, white and blue were loved.

This afternoon, we started our science unit "Balance and Motion." You can see photos here of children finding ways to balance the tricky crayfish using clothespins as counterweights. They had to answer the question, "How do you know if something is balanced?"

Several people have commented on how much they are enjoying the blog. I am amazed at how many people look at it! Look at the statistics below of who is viewing the blog...

Pageviews by Countries Singapore 1,374 United States 226 United Kingdom 91 Hong Kong 54 New Zealand 29 Italy 24 Australia 19 Canada 19 India 17 Malaysia 9

Thanks to everyone who has been so helpful this week. Enjoy your weekend...
Debbie

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

I bet your kids are tired today because I am!  We started the day with Show & Tell. Samantha dressed up her in Dad's lab coat and safety glasses, then showed us how an energy ball works. The children held hands around the circle, but Samantha and Allison finished the circle by put a finger on the energy ball. When everyone was linked, the ball lit up and made a noise. If people broke the circle, the ball went quiet. You can see it on this video clip:

Woodlands Walk

The class is ready to write down all the people/stores they see in the neighborhood

Thanks to all the parents who came with us as we identified lots of people working in our local neighborhood. We saw hair salons, doctors, hardware stores, key cutters, fishmongers (we had to hold our noses at that one!), nail salons, a paint shop, electronics stores, hawker stall, dress shops, and many more. You can see photos of our walk here. (I'm sorry some of them are sideways - I rotated them but they are still sideways.)

The pet store was popular

The fish shop was stinky! 

We spent the afternoon making dioramas of shops we saw on our walk. The children were very creative and worked very hard for more than an hour, making their shops. Thank goodness we had some Moms helping us with this!  There are some photos here.

Jemma's candy shop

And just for fun, here are a couple of You Tube clips we've been watching/singing to this week.
WARNING: this song gets firmly stuck in your head for the rest of the day!!!!

How many names do you have?

This week, I have put a range of photos into an album simply called September 16. You can find them all here.
Here are a few of them:

Some children presented the Readers Theater version of The Gingerbread Man

 In math we were learning that numbers have many names e.g. 5 is 2+3, 10-5, 2+4 etc. To introduce the idea, we all listed the many names people have for us and wrote each one on a sticky note, then attached it to ourselves. It was hilarious!

Today we celebrated the end of our first reading unit "Readers Build Good Habits." Six classes went to the group room for a "Silent Reading-athon" to show how we are building our reading stamina.

We also had our first assembly for the year. Julia, Jemma, Samantha and Zoe went on stage to celebrate the August/September birthdays. Allison and Kai also went up to receive their certificates for great work this month.

And here is a link to a math game they have loved playing this week, making sums that add up to 10: Save the Whale

Wild Things in my class!

Another fun week of learning is over. I am truly enjoying this class. 


WILD THINGS - I read "Where the Wild Things Are" to the class, then the students all made Wild Thing costumes. The next day, they got together in groups and made up Wild Things number stories. Of course, to finish off, we had to have  WILD RUMPUS too. Here's a video of our work:

Friday was an especially busy day. In the morning a Grade 1 teacher from a Cambodian school came to visit. She was surprised that my class was able to write, and that they were so quiet.

In the afternoon, Zoe's Mom brought baby Hannah for Zoe's Show & Tell, then we celebrated Zoe's 7th birthday. As soon as that was finished, we joined 2 other classes for a Wild Rumpus to finish our work on "Where the Wild Things Are." (See the video below) If the Cambodian teacher had still been with us, she would NOT have seen such a quiet class!!

SOCIAL STUDIES: The current Social Studies unit is “What is a Community?” We began by talking about ourselves and getting to know each other then discussed the word community. We decided that our classroom is a community so the children wrote a list of rules to ensure our community runs well. This week we will talk about the people who work/help us in our school community, and who works/helps us in the Woodlands Community. We will also go on our first field trip, walking around the local community to see who works there.

Zoe's Mom was a fabulous story reader. Let me know if other parents want to read to the class!

I'm a writer - Wackydoo!

Poem of the week:
I can write about kings, 
and stings
And hippopotamuses' wings.
I can write about me
And you.
I'm a writer - wackydoo!



Celebrating Writing

On Friday we had some special visitors come in to hear everyone read their first published piece of writing for this year. Mrs. Donaghey (Literacy Coach for Primary School), Ms. Cheryl (Principal's secretary) and Ms Elise (resource teacher) really enjoyed being part of our celebrations and happily handed out stickers to children for all their efforts. At the end of the sharing time we made a 'toast' and said "Cheers!" with our fruit punch. (Some children thought we were going to make a toast with bread and a toaster!!)  

You can see more photos of our celebration here

Cheers to being writers! 

Ready to go home after another big day in 1st Grade