April 27-30, 2015

A 4-day week has just finished and leave us 6 school weeks to go. It was indeed a busy week with Pre-K-Grade 2 mini concert in the middle of the week. The kids did great job singing 11 songs in a row. Yes, 11 songs! Fantastic job, wasn't it? Check the previous post for some video clips from the concert.

Learning ABC pattern by stamping the pets

Pattern blocks for pets, yes please.

The pretty colorful bird

How many bones does this dog want?

Digging the sand to find the bones buried by the dogs.

Found one!

It's all about pets. Cats, birds, dogs, fish and other pets hung out in our class all week long. Possessing some pets at home, some kids know quite well about their pets' habits. Other kids who experienced playing with their relatives' pets added some useful information on how to take care of the pets.

Our fishy squishy aquariums were fun to made. The kids started with drawing their own fish on craft foams. Drawing on craft foams and cutting around their fish were new experiences for them. Looking at the way they cut around the fish, you can really tell that their fine motor skill has developed quite well. Most of the kids did those two steps independently and only a few of them needed minimum supports. After preparing the fish, they had to do other fun step which was adding the blue hair gel to the zipper bags. The ooey gooey texture of the hair gel gave them different sensation when they touch it. Some kids loved it and some others just trying their best to add the hair gel to the bag as fast as they can without getting any gel dropped on their hands. The final step was adding the fish and some sea plants into the bags and the aquariums were ready. Now our squishy fishy aquariums are displayed nicely at our classroom windows. If you haven't seen them yet, spend some time next week and check if your kid can know which one is his/her aquarium just by looking at the fish they created.

Pre-K 3 students love cooking and there is no doubt about it. They love doing all the steps needed in cooking, from the simplest task like washing some of the ingredients till the task that is more complicated. As long as it is safe for them to do it, there should be no hesitation to let them try doing it. This week, we had our gold fish jello made in our class. Some of them tried to convince Mr. Marriott that they were making cookies instead of jello when a big pot of water was at the cooking table at that time. Nice try guys. LOL. 

Have you met Sally? Sally is our class cat. We started by having a discussion about what class pet we should make. The choices were narrowed down to two options, a cat or a dog. After having a tight vote, a cat was finally chosen. We gathered all the materials needed from our recycle shelf like cardboard boxes, paper towel rolls and craft foam which the kids worked together to recycle all of those stuffs into a cat. The next day, we needed to have another class discussion about the color of the cat. About seven students agreed that the cat should be all black. They took turns painting the cat carefully and Ms. Idah creatively added the details. The final class discussion was about the cat's detail information. Endless ideas were going around the discussion which then finalized to the information which you can see on the picture above. It's so nice to see the kids practicing their discussion skill.

The pet show was a big success. We met Lindy the hedgehog, Minoune and Suzie the cats, Tic-Tac-Toc the three fish and Grizzly, Red, Kai and Momo the dogs. It was another proud moment looking at the kids using their language skills to tell stories about their pets and also to ask and answer questions about the pets. The day before the show, they worked together preparing the sign for the pet show. Thanks for all parents' support and for those who managed to attend the pet show, on behalf of the kids, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it and the kids enjoyed having your company.