November 24-28, 2014

Pre-K 3 students are thankful for their families, friends, and stack of toys they have in their house...

A week full of gratefulness has just finished and we are only three weeks away from Winter break. Thank you for coming on Wednesday, Nov 26 for the Parent Teacher Conference. I was so excited to report all the progress the kids have made by far. And again, thank you for sharing your wonderful kids with me. They are awesome!

We practiced our table manners by offering and asking for food and drinks using phrases like, "Do you want some... ?" "May I please have some... ?" "Yes, please." "No, thank you." "Sure, here you are." It's another proud moment looking and hearing at the kids doing this effortlessly.

Hopefully, all parents have received our Thanksgiving greeting that we made using educreation app that we sent by e-mail. The kids had fun doing all the technology parts to make that greeting as well as making the beautiful Thanksgiving lantern. They did all the steps to make the lantern carefully.

We also did some activities that incorporate math and fine motor skill. We did some planting patterns, cutting-ordering-pasting our Thanksgiving puzzle, finding all the turkeys hiding in the tub full of corn, and also sorting the beans.

We had fun doing our science experiment this week, which is hopping corn. The kids took turns to add things into the experiment jar patiently. They are getting better and better each day on taking turns and passing things around. They were amazed and screamed happily when all the corns started to hop inside the jar. 

The kids had great experience by being Indians a day this Friday. They made their own Indian rain sticks and hats, they danced and played their rain sticks hoping that we could have a pouring rain on that day, they prepared all the things needed to have the delicious corns on the cob, and finally all the little Indians had corn feast for their lunch. 

Apps Mashup for Community Workers Unit

Ian Craig, our technology integrator,  came up with a great idea of doing apps mashup in our community workers unit. The apps that we used are Community Helpers and Explain Everything. They had fun choosing community helpers that they like and taking each other pictures using Community Helpers app-photo shoot activity. We put all the pictures together and recorded their voices, naming the community helpers, using Explain Everything app. Here is the short video, just in case you missed it at this morning assembly.

November 17-21, 2014

Welcome to trimester 2. Trimester 1 report cards will be sent home on Tuesday and I am so looking forward to seeing all the parents to discuss the progress that the kids have achieved by far. We survived the first Friday at school and the kids seemed to enjoy the idea of 5 days school ;)

Welcome to the 4-year old club, sweetheart. Hoping this year's birthday is the very best for super 4 year old - like you - can ever have.

Human has so many bones

Doctor Ade helped us to weigh ourselves

'This is the room for kids vaccination.' said nurse Erica

This is the pharmacy

Doctor Sam checked the heartbeat

Cheese...!

We had a great opportunity to visit Chevron clinic as part of our community workers unit. We met people working at hospital or clinic such as doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. Doctor Sam, doctor Ade and nurse Erica were so generous spending their time to take the kids on a tour around the clinic and explained what they usually do in their jobs. The kids paid good attention at every explanation and they were so curious about the tools they saw at the clinic and kept asking questions about them. Being very good listeners, nurse Erica gave the kids rubber bracelets. Thank you very much for every single person in Chevron clinic for their support in kids world of exploration.

Inspired by our visit to Chevron clinic, we set up a little clinic in our class. Taking turns, the kids tried to be doctors and patients. I was once being the patient and the six doctors gave me all of the treatments, all at once! I was a bit overwhelmed, yet happy when one doctor checked my heartbeat, one doctor checked my blood pressure, one doctor checked my temperature, one doctor gave me a shot, one doctor put band aid on my forehead, and the last doctor nicely called my father to let him know that I was in a very good care in their clinic :)

We really love The Skeleton Dance by Super Simple Song. The lyric is very informative and the video is very funny. We danced along with all the skeletons on the video. After that, using white crayons, we traced around our arms. Then we used white glue to stick all the q-tips as our arm and hand bones.

To practice our number recognition and writing, we used thermometer to check each other's temperature. We wrote the temperature showing on the thermometer on the chart. Who's got the highest temperature?

Expressing our love to band aid, we made some band aid wafers using wafers, white fondant, and strawberry jam. It was so easy to make them. Most of the kids loved having a little bit of 'blood' on their band aid wafers, but one kid preferred to have the clean ones.

Endless ABC app was introduced to the kids this week. We let them explore this new app after doing their Wet-Dry-Try project. The kids really love this new app. This app is really great to reinforce letter recognition and phonic sound introduction. It's highly recommended to be downloaded to your family iPad.

Using Community Helpers app, we chose the photo shoot activity to have fun taking each other pictures and attached that to the community helpers bodies. Using Community Helpers and Explain Everything apps, we put together a video presentation to be shared on Monday assembly. Don't miss it!

Look who came to our class on our first Friday. Yup, that is Mr. Craig, our tech master. Mr. Craig will come to our class, not exclusively on Fridays, to help us learning more about how to use technology to make our learning and exploration more fun and more cool!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Revisiting our Eric Carle unit a few weeks ago, we managed to put together the photos taken by the kids on our ridge walk on a video using Explain Everything app. Enjoy!

November 10-13, 2014

Yay! We survived the first trimester. It's a wrap! Starting from next week, we will have a full week school, five days a week, no more long weekends for Pre-K 3 :)

We had quite a busy week this week with the field trip to Pizza Hut as the main highlights. The kids had great experiences, not only to meet the people working at a restaurant but also the opportunity to make their own meat lovers pizza. They were very excited waiting for all the pizza pans came out of the huge oven.

Other than that, we also had a lot of activities about 'restaurant' theme in our classroom. The kids really love having a 'restaurant' in the classroom with them being the chefs and bakers in the kitchen. I had non stop offers of various food, drinks and desserts from the chefs and bakers. Lucky me!

Welcome to our restaurant!

What would you like to order?

We make the best cookies in town.

Here you are...

He designed his apron carefully

They also enjoyed every step taken to make their own play dough such as measuring, mixing, kneading and shaping the dough. They got even more excited to know that they could bring the play dough home to play it with their siblings.

Beside learning about jobs at a restaurant, we also learned about another job which is an artist with Piet Mondrian chosen as our artist study. They recreated Mondrian's Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow. Carefully, they put some glue on the black strips then laid them down on the white paper. After that they chose some spaces to be painted in red, blue and yellow using tempera paint. 

And here are some other fun activities we did in our class.

C for Carrot

Sorting food and drink

Good teamwork in putting back together all the jigsaw puzzle pieces