Newsletter, 6th of November 2015

This week started with some of our children sharing their activities over the weekend and over the holidays. The children sat in groups whilst the teachers showed some weekend and holiday photos which were uploaded on the blogs. It was such a delight to see how interested all the children were in their friends' holiday and weekend activities. Some of the children were also very confident to speak about their activities in front of the class.

This activity has really been helpful in developing our children's communication skills as well as in developing our children's awareness of individual differences amongst their peers outside school. Thank you Mummies and Daddies for updating your children's blogs! We hope we can continue this habit throughout the year! 

The children enjoyed a variety of new things in school today. Following our children's interest, we have been transforming our role-play area into a safari jungle. A lot of great pretend play has been going on as children act as jungle animals! 

There were also jungle animal sets in our small world area which the children absolutely loved! All of them have been playing alongside each other, taking turns, and creating interesting play situations with the animals. Some say the animals are travelling to the zoo to see the people, and some also said that the animals are trying to escape a bigger animal monster! 

We have also transformed our reading area into a "Reading Garden" which is now a more calm and relaxing area for children to read. The children love accessing this area and have been independently choosing books and even reading books to one another! 

This week, we reinforced our children's number learning through a couple of activities. We are pleased that most of our children know their number language and are gradually understanding the proper ways of counting. We will be continuing this in the coming weeks to strengthen our children's number skills. 

In the sandpit, the children also had an opportunity to use their finding, digging, and teamwork skills. Together, they used their hands to dig for animals and counted how many animals they have found all in all. It was such great fun with lots of fine motor and number practice! 

The children also had opportunities to practise their body and hand control skills. In the main playground, the children played games that tapped on their safe running, balancing, and body control skills. In the classroom, the children used their hands in free painting and in creating shapes with elastics on the Geoboard. The IWB also featured a BusyThings activity for children's early writing skills. 

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NOTICES 

1. Please always remember to bring your child's complete swimming kit (proper bath towel and swimsuit in a bag) on Mondays and Thursdays. We also encourage bringing goggles as the children have started swimming under the water. 

2. The International Week celebration will be in a couple of weeks. On this week, there will be a dress-up day wherein children will be coming to school in their lovely national costumes. There will also be activities about different countries where parent participation is highly encouraged. If you would like to volunteer, please feel free to inform any class teacher. 

It has been such a fantastic week for everyone! Thank you for your support and have a great weekend! 

Ms Clarissa, Ms Precious, Ms Christine, and the F2 Team 

Newsletter Friday, 30th October 2015

Welcome back everyone!

We hope you had a lovely and restful half-term break. The children told their teachers and friends lots of stories about how they spent their holiday. Some rode an aeroplane to a different city or country, some went to the beach, and a number of them spent quality time with their families and friends. Ms Precious and Ms Christine have already shared photos from their holiday trips and the children were very eager to talk about theirs. Next Monday, we will be looking at the blogs and the children can have a go at telling their friends what kept them busy during that week-long, fun-filled holiday! We can’t wait to hear about them!

We kicked off the second half of term 1 with an array of activities that the children truly enjoyed. In the mark-making area, the children continue to practise how to write their names and proper handling of the marker. They wrote with excellent control and developing tripod grips. The children also had a go at recognising whose name is written on every card and eventually found theirs.

In the IWB, they played with the BusyThings tracing activity. The game shows the children how to write letters by demonstrating the proper strokes and letting the child trace through the dots. The children took turns well and waited patiently for their turn. They also practised their tripod grips as they traced with the IWB pen. Some children were already able to recognise the letters and incorporate them with their friends’ names.

In the Maths area, the children played with our new provision--  number lacing. They identified the numbers and threaded the number beads into the laces. The teachers were delighted to see that some of our children have already mastered number recognition from 1-5. Most of them are already familiar with numbers 6-10. They showed great concentration whilst threading the numbers and exhibited impressive fine motor skills. Well done children!

Last Wednesday, the children had a wonderful time playing in the big playground.  They hopped on the bikes, trikes and scooters and gave them a spin. The children showed excellent taking turns with the different vehicles. We were very happy to see that our children are becoming more confident with gross motor activities and are more willing to try new things.

The children learnt some positional words such as 'inside', 'outside', 'in front', 'behind', 'on', and 'under'. They identified where certain objects are using these new words. The children also had a go at putting the objects according to the positional word that was said.They were also encouraged to respond to the question 'where' using simple sentences and they were amazing! We will carry on with the other positional words next week. 

Just before the holidays, we started having our music classes in the music room. Mr John was very pleased to observe that the children have already mastered most of the songs that we learn during music time. They have been singing along very well and joining in with actions enthusiastically.

Here are some songs that we learnt with Mr John:

Bananas, Bananas

Banana bananas clap clap clap
Banana bananas flap flap flap
Banana bananas click click click
Banana bananas flick flick flick
Banana bananas bump bump bump
Banana bananas jump jump jump

Shake My Sillies Out

We've gotta shake, shake, shake my sillies out,
Shake, shake, shake my sillies out,
Shake, shake, shake my sillies out,
And wiggle my waggles away!

We've gotta clap, clap, clap my crazies out,
Clap, clap, clap my crazies out,
Clap, clap, clap my crazies out,
And wiggle my waggles away!

We've gotta jump, jump, jump my jiggles out,
Jump, jump, jump my jiggles out,
Jump, jump, jump my jiggles out,
And wiggle my waggles away!

Make A Face

Make a face, make a face, make a happy face

make a face, make a happy face (2x)

Make a face, make a face, make a sad face

make a face, make a sad face (2x)

Make a face, make a face, make an angry face

make a face, make an angry face (2x)

Head, Shoulders Baby

Head, shoulders baby 1, 2, 3

Head, shoulders baby 1, 2, 3

Head shoulders, head shoulders

Head, shoulders baby 1, 2, 3

Knees, feet baby 1, 2, 3

Knees, feet baby 1, 2, 3

Knees feet, knees knees feet

Knees, feet baby 1, 2, 3

Hands Can Hold 

Hands can hold and hands can squeeze
Hands can rest up on your knees
Hands can clap and hands can shake
What kind of sound can your tongue make?

Hands can hold and hands can squeeze
Hands can rest up on your knees
Hands can clap and hands can shake
What kind of sound can your legs make?

Hands can hold and hands can squeeze
Hands can rest up on your knees
Hands can clap and hands can shake
What kind of sound can your hands make?

Mr John also taught the children two special Halloween songs today: Go Away Spooky Goblin and Five Creepy Spiders.  They had a go at joining in with the actions and singing along. 

This week, we have added new musical instruments in our Music area for the children to play with such as cymbals, castanets, guiros, hand bells and a xylophone. They had a lovely time playing the different instruments together!

A week won’t be complete without some splash pool fun! Mr Sun was out and it was a perfect time to go swimming. Before taking a dip, the children did some bending and stretching to warm their muscles up. They also did some leg and arm exercises to encourage them to use their legs and arms for swimming. Last Thursday, we played the Swim and Squeeze relay game with Ms Christine. The children swam towards the end of the pool and squeezed some water in the bucket. They then swam back to give it to the next player. The teachers were happy to see that some children are already confident to dip their faces in the water whilst swimming.

This week, we also celebrated the birthdays of Vivi, Ms Tu and Ms Clarissa!

Wow, this has been surely a fun-filled first week back from the holiday. We’ll definitely have more exciting activities next week but for now, have a SPOOKtacular Halloween weekend! Enjoy the treats!

NOTICES:
Library
From next week, the children can borrow books again from the library

Swimming Kit
Please label all your child's belongings with a permanent marker.
Also, if you think your child will be unable to swim, please provide us with a medical certificate.
As per school policy, if your child is in school, then he/she should be well enough to join our swimming sessions. 

Holiday Photos
If you have any holiday photos that you would like your child to share with his/her friends, please post them in your child's blog.


Thank you and have a restful weekend,
Ms Christine, Ms Precious, Ms Clarissa and the F2 team

Newsletter, Friday, 16th of October 2015

It has been such a hectic end to the first half of the term! This week, we continued and extended learning about the outer space. In one of our focus group activities, we talked about how specially skilled people called astronauts journey into space. We learnt that they work in space stations alongside other skilled people like scientists, engineers, and computer scientists so they can go to space smoothly. It was also interesting to know that there are other places called planets in the outer space and that astronauts go on space missions to visit these places so we can learn more about them. We also learnt that the sun is the biggest and hottest star in the universe, that is why planets that are close to it are hot whilst the ones that are far from it can be cold. We also had the chance to create our own planets in the workshop area by painting and threading.

On Monday, we had bags of uncooked rice in our tuff spot. Our teacher put powder paints and a little bit of water in the bags and we made the rice coloured by shaking the bags really hard! We also learnt that when we mix two colours together, a new colour could be made! In this activity, we mixed yellow and blue to create green, red and yellow to create orange, and red and blue to create purple. We waited for the rice to dry up and poured them all in our tuff spot which has been filled with lovely rainbow rice. The coloured rice has been very popular and we have been doing lots of mixing, pouring, and pretend-cooking. Lots of hand control practise and imaginative play!

We enjoyed lots of physical activities this week! In the splash pool, we impressed our teachers by showing good listening and following during our warm-up exercise. We practised our kicking legs in the water and also tried to blow into the water to create bubbles. Our teachers have been very pleased that most of us are enjoying the splash pool sessions and are showing great water confidence!

We also did lots of exercise in our playgrounds! In the Fundino playground, some of us balanced on the wooden planks and blocks. We also played a relay game in the main playground where we did our best in jumping with two feet, balancing, and running safely. All of us showed confidence in doing a physical activity which delighted our teachers!

Our classroom was also busy with lots of number and writing work. This week, we focused on reciting and recognising numbers 1-10. In one activity, we had the opportunity to choose a number of space creatures to stick onto our planets. We then counted how many creatures there were and selected the correct numeral. On the carpet, we also practised number recognition and some of us had a go at trying to form some numerals on the IWB. We then played an IWB game on counting and selecting the correct numeral. It was fun to have a start at number work and we will be continuing our counting and number recognition practise when we go back from our break!

This week, we also had a special time to enjoy our mark-making books. We impressed our teacher by getting our mark-making books by looking for our names. We then had a go at using the pens to create marks on our books. Most of us already know how our names look like and some of us are already showing proper handling of the pen. We have been drawing happy faces, our families, and other things that we see around us.

We have been so lucky to enjoy sweet treats this week! On Thursday, we celebrated Tin Tin's birthday and enjoyed a delicious cake! On Friday, some of us went down to the kitchen and baked alien cookies with our teacher!

Friday was also Isaac's last day with us before his family goes to New Zealand, and Isaac's dad was very kind to bring a cake for us to share. Thank you Isaac for being a part of our class. We will miss you and we wish you all the best in New Zealand!

It has been such a hectic week of fun and learning! We all deserve a restful half-term break!

Thank you!

Ms Clarissa, Ms Precious, Ms Christine and the F2 Team

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NOTICES:
- School is closed for the half-term holiday, 19th October to 23rd October
- All children come back to school on the 26th of October
- Please pick up your children on time (14:30). For children who have clubs, home time is at 15:40.
- Please secure your child's swimming things in a proper swimming bag. We are discouraging the use of disposable plastic bags. Please also provide a proper bath towel for your child's comfort.
- For those who are interested to join the parent EAL group with Ms Michelle, please reach out to Ms Emma for more details (emmawestman@bisvietnam.com)