
TIS & TIP students, teachers and families gather on our school lawn during our Life Celebration event
- It was with great pleasure that TIP students and teachers attended the first annual, TIS Life celebration event, held on March 13th. The event coincided with the one year anniversary of the earthquake, and also the one year anniversary of the passing of a great man, our former Principal who established TIP, Mr. Kano. It was decided that the Life celebration event should be a day when our school community could come together and remember the past, as well as celebrating our lives, and what we love doing. TIP students had a lot of fun, as they tried hoola hooping, origami, signed a TIS sign, ‘cooked’ marshmallows in the ‘campfire’ in Grade 1′s reading tent, danced, enjoyed Mr. Coleman’s yummy BBQ, and much, much more. Following this, we enjoyed a school-wide picnic lunch on the lawn, and gathered together to make a heart shape around Mr, Kano’s tree.

Toasting a 'marshmallow' by the campfire in grade 1's reading tent, at the TIS Life celebration event

Playing duck, duck, goose
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- Literacy
P2 & P3 students are now in the habit of doing their journals on Monday mornings. They are thinking carefully about something they have done and would like to write about. P2 have been working towards thinking of beginning sounds and labeling their pictures, with some students sounding out their full words. P3 students are currently working towards forming sentences, using finger spaces, and periods, as well ass thinking about when we us upper and lower case letters. Some P3 students have also begun to write 2 sentences to accompany their drawings.
P3 have learned all 5 vowel sounds, and a song to help them remember.
P2 and P3 have again this month been working on building stamina in independent literacy choice time, and after each session reflect on their choices and how well they have worked by “checking in”. This is something you could have children do at home, reflecting on how well they did something. Please ask your child to demonstrate how we do this at TIP. During this time, children can choose between reading by themselves, reading with a friend, a storytelling activity (puppet shows, felt storyboards, journals, making story books), or practicing numbers, letters and words (whiteboard writing, trace and wipe words, making words with beads or alphabet blocks, card games, and so on.
Our P1 class continued to review our alphabet phonics sounds with our Letterland storybook. They also did some art and craft, making things that start with reviewed letter sounds, using scissors, glue and origami paper.
Art Inquiry
During Art time this month, we looked at how Picasso expressed himself in his rose and blue periods, and produced our own picasso esque artworks. We also read a story about Aboriginal art and looked at some symbols that were used in early rock paintings. Students brought in a rock and did their own rock symbol paintings.
P2 & P3 also learned how to sketch, and have been adding to their sketch books weekly. It’s really helped some children to relax and concentrate on drawing skills.

Sketching in the forest

Towards the end of the month, TIP students all learned about watercolour paints, and have been starting to experiment with them. We look forward to doing some spring art work with them soon.

Learning how to use watercolour paints
Fun with numbers (P2 & P3)
During March, students continued to build their number skills, and P2 made a number train for display in our classroom. P2 & P3 also made their own clocks, and learned how to tell the time on the hour. P3 also learned about digital time and matched digital and analogue times. We compared day and night times by drawing pictures of what we do during each, and also played “What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?”.
Japanese with Mrs. Hiromi
In our P1-P3 Japanese culture class, we made camellias with origami paper, by ripping carefully and sticking on paper we call, “Chigiri-e”(ちぎり絵). We also started making a TIP “Spring garden”, which students will add to weekly as they make spring themed items with origami paper.
Japanese with Ms. Akane Kono (P3)
This month, Ms. Akane has really noticed how much our P3 students have grown up, as they are consistently demonstrating positive attitudes a strong skills. There were three P3 Japanese classes this month, and in each class we read books, memorized hiragana with puzzle activities, and practiced how to write and read hiragana.
The books we read this month were “a lot of people”(にんげんがいっぱい), “Pele’s new clothes”(ペレのあたらしいふく), “aiueo-king”(あいうえおうさま).
We learned about how to count in Japanese, what words include each hiragana like “aiueo”, and how to be caring to each other, especially if we help someone, we will be helped by someone. Students could focus on listening to stories, even if they were a little long, and could think about characteristics of the stories such as the characters, letters, words and so on.
When we did puzzles, students said “aiueo” by themselves using their own initiative. They helped and cooperated with each other, and are beginning to thnk of words that begin with the characters, rather than thinking about the characters in isolation. For example, “「めがね」の「め」”.
Students had learned how to write all of the hiragana by the beginning of the month, then we practiced to use them. We tried to confirm each hiragana with coloring pictures.
Music with Mrs. Jennifer Sadler
This month the children continued to practice their understanding of rhythm and keeping a steady beat by marching to a new song called “The Marching Song”. With this song everyone can have the opportunity to be the leader as we march around the room. Next month we will add some percussion sticks to play as we keep a steady beat singing our new song together.
To tie in with the unit of inquiry, How we express ourselves, we listened to a song called “Inspector Morse” in order to hear a musical pattern (ostinato) that uses morse code. We explored how morse code is made up of a combination of long and short sounds known as “dits” and “dahs” and are used to send messages to people that live far away from each other. We all listened to the different sounds of morse code used for the alphabet and tried to find which letter was being played.
We talked about how caterpillars become butterflies and acted out this transformation by moving to music together.
PE with Mr. David Onuoha (P2 & P3)


We have been learning about movement that has to with space while performing specific manipulative movement skills, such as kicking a stationary object during soccer and hand-ball. We also did games that had to do with body-balancing and locomotion, For example balancing on a ball with or without aid, running, racing and fun walks. All students were willing to work co-operatively with others during physical activity by taking turns and encouraging others.


Looking forward…
- “Show & Tell” topics for next month, with weeks starting on the dates below, are:
- April 2nd – Free choice
- April 9th – Spring
- April 16th – Gardens
- April 23rd – My favourite food/drink
- May 7th – My Golden Week holiday
- May 14th – My favourite farm animal
- May 21st – Free choice
- May 28th – My friends
- June 4th – My favourite school memory
- June 11th – No “show & tell” this week
- June 18th – No “show & tell” this week

Look! I made a seesaw!
Important dates
- Friday April 6th – Scholastic Book Order due
- Friday April 14th – TIP Student Portfolios are due back
- Wednesday April 18th – Open School Day (pm), Parent Circle
- Monday April 23rd – Earth Day, Parent Volunteer Day
- Friday April 27th – Shoes home day
- April 28th to May 6th – Golden Week holiday
- Thursday May 17th – Open School Day, TIS Grade 5 PYP Exhibition
- Thursday May 31st – TIS/TIP Sports Day
- Thursday June 21st – TIP Graduation
- Friday June 22nd – Last day of school for students

P1 exploring during recess time on the TIS field