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!
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.
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
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:
( 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.
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
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!!!!
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
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!
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!!)
