Look what I found!
This week, students at TIP completed their textured name cards with some colourful pictures. From next week, we will use these cards as helper cards, where each day a different student will take on the roles of line leader and teacher’s helper. We hope this will be a good exercise in students taking leadership and developing confidence in their abilities, as well as good practise in taking turns. Please see below for some more things that we have been up to at TIP this week.
Unit of Inquiry
Where we are in Place and Time: Growing and Changing, is our year long Unit of inquiry focusing on children’s developments, progress and achievements in all areas, throughout the year. The first month of school has provided some time for Teacher’s to observe and document where children are at, and for students to do some initial work samples. We hope that over the course of the year we can reflect with students on their achievements, and set some goals together. This will be reflected in the students portfolios.
This week, we continued name recognition activities, and completed some bubble name writing (or in the case of P1 students, colouring). We also began to look at our first line of inquiry with students, “similarities and differences between past and present”. We shared the story From Head to Toe by Eric Carle, which sends a confidence building message of “I can do it!”, while introducing body parts and movements. Students danced to the accompanying song, and then thought about things that they can do, and also things that they weren’t able to do as a baby, but can now. We will continue to look at our abilities and why these have changed, next week.
Art
Preschoolers continued exploring colours and spatial awareness in art this week. We shared Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert, talking about the shapes and colours of all the flowers in the book. We then set out to create our own colourful garden, each drawing a flower to contribute. We also finished off some hand print butterflies by twirling pipe cleaners for antennas and sticking them on. Over the next month, we will explore mixing colours, primary and secondary colours, as well as lines.
Flower design
Drawing colourful flowers
TIP Garden
Flowers and butterflies
Sharing our world
We have been very lucky to have had Ms. Meirav, from Israel, helping out with our class over the past couple of weeks. This week, we learned a little more about her culture as she shared with us a story about the Jewish new year, which was celebrated last week. One of the big customs that she does during this time, is to eat various foods that symbolize her wishes for the new year. The most popular ones are apple and honey, which represent a sweet new year, and pomegranate seeds, which represent the many good deeds for the upcoming year. Children listened attentively to a story, partook in some eating activities, and a collage art activity with Ms. Meirav.
Learning about Jewish New Year traditions from Ms. Meirav
Tasting some apple and honey which represent a sweet new year full of good deeds according to Jewish traditions
Reflecting on what we learned about the Jewish New Year, with an art activity
Literacy
From next week, TIP students will begin our phonics program. We will concentrate on 2 letters and their sounds per week, using the Letterland approach, amongst other literacy activities. Letterland is a multi-sensory phonics approach to teaching children how to read, spell and write through child-friendly characters. Children will become acquainted with characters featuring lowercase letters of the alphabet and their sounds, through songs, dance, movement and stories. As a class and independently, we will use children’s inquiry skills to also explore words that begin with different sounds we learn. At TIP, we teach lowercase letters first, as these are what are most commonly found around us, and most children already have some familiarity with uppercase letters. We also teach the sounds of letters before the names of letters, as this is what helps us to take the steps towards becoming readers. Depending on the age and stage each child is at, we have different activities to consolidate learning from P1 through to P3. At first, you may find it strange hearing your child talk about Clever Cat and her whiskers while singing about her saying keh-keh-keh, but we have found it a very valuable approach for students of all abilities and backgrounds at TIP. If you would lke to know more about Letterland, they have lots of information on their website, as well as free downloads: http://www.letterland.com/
Japanese
In Japanese class this week we read a story and talked about chestnuts, which we have plenty of in our school yard! Children then used their developing cutting, sticking folding and spatial awareness skills to do a lovely visual representation of both the outside and inside of a chestnut.
Next week, P3 will begin their Japanese classes with Ms. Akane, twice a week, and P2 will join P1 for an additional Japanese class each week with Mrs. Hiromi. In addition, all TIP students will still continue with their weekly culture and language class with Mrs. Hiromi and Ms. Akane also.
Scissor practise
Cutting pieces of construction paper for our chestnut collage
Making a chestnut shell collage
Our Chestnut display from Japanese class, with Mrs. Hiromi
Looking forward…
-You will have noticed that your children brought home their indoor shoes, cap, cup and toothbrush on Friday afternoon. These are sent home on a monthly basis to be cleaned, and sent back to school with your child the following Monday. Please remember to send them back on Monday October 3rd. Thank you so much!
- Thank you very much to parents who have already made appointments for our Parent-Teacher conferences next week. Please be advised that unfortunately there will be no child minding facilities for TIP children during our conferences, so please pick your children up as usual, even if you have a conference. Also, please do not hesitate to bring your children along with you to the conferences. For parents of children who take the school bus, we will contact you directly regarding your situation on conference days.
- Next week will be our first week of “Show & Tell”. Please check my previous email regarding your child’s designated day, and encourage them to bring something along to share with their class. Next week’s topic will be “Me”, which may include a photo or drawing of something, a favourite toy, something your child really likes, etc, and will help us get to know our friends a little more. The following week’s topic will be “My name”.
- Please send your child’s small music file that they received from Mr. Coleman to school next Friday. Children do not need to bring their large music file to school.
- From next week at TIP, P2 & P3 will be introduced to their second classroom, upstairs, where they will begin to start spending their morning learning times.
- Next Wednesday, we will have a new friend join our class at TIP. Please give a big warm welcome to her and her family if you see them about.
- We are planning a special family morning at TIP on Tuesday October 11th, the same day as our next open school day. Please keep this day free if possible and come along to join our classroom for a fun and interactive morning. We will send more information to you soon.
Making mud dumplings during recess
Important dates
October 5th to 7th – TIP Parent-Teacher conferences
Monday October 10th – National holiday, No school
Tuesday October 11th – TIP Family gathering (10:00-12:30), Open School Day (1-2pm) & Parent Circle (2-3pm)
Wednesday October 12th – School Tour for prospective families, 9:30am
October 20th to 21st – PYP Authorisation visit
Wednesday October 26th – TIS & TIP Fall Festival
Wednesday November 2nd – Open school day (am), Parent Circle
Thursday November 3 – School Holiday
November 21st & 22nd – PYP in-school Wokshop for Teachers, School holidays
Wednesday November 23rd – School Holiday
Wednesday November 30th – First term ends, TIP Portfolios go home
Thrsday December 1st – Professional Development Day, School Holiday
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Oct.31,2011
