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.
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 21st , 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.
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
