Information for Parents 31. January 2020

Today was Annie's last day. Annie was working mainly in Pre-KG, but also sometimes in Kindergarten. We are sad she is leaving but wish her all the best for her future plans.

From next Monday, 3rd February, Lubin will be the new assistant teacher in Early Years. He will be mainly assisting Pre-KG. Please welcome him.

We will celebrate "Setsubun no Hi" on Monday. This is a traditional Japanese holiday whose purpose is to chase away bad luck and welcome good luck into the home. Bad luck is represented by oni, or "demons." On Monday, some "oni" will visit our school. But tell your children not to be frightened, because by throwing beans at the oni, they can easily scare them away. They can also scare them away by shouting "oni wa soto!" and "fuku wa uchi!" which means "demons out!" and "good luck in!"

We will have two new children from next Monday. Eita and Timo. Please welcome them.

Eating the Alphabet

In the 2nd week back at school, the Pre–KG children took the book "Eating the Alphabet" as an inspiration to learn about a greater variety of fruits and vegetables. They were amazed at some unusual items and happy to find familiar ones they knew. At the end of the week they showed amazing understanding and speed during a fruit and veggies quiz. 

27th of January 2020 The world around us

In our new Unit we are looking into "What is the world made of".

The children are busy exploring a room filled with different materials such as glass, metal, wood, paper, plastic and fabric. In different activities we are trying to find out what material they know and how we might be able to know what something is made of. 

They already found out that not everything we can see through, is glass, it could be plastic as well. Not everything that is hard is metal, wood can be hard too. They also found out that two of the same kind of things (clothes pins, cutlery...) could be different materials. So if you find your kids gently knocking on things, scratching or shaking them, they might be on a mission to find out what it is made of. 

 

We are learning a whole lot of new words like "man made and natural materials", smooth, rough, shiny, light and heavy, soft and hard, magnetic and more. Other words that have been coming up are "science and experiment" and the question "What do you think will happen?" We provided different materials, a tub full of water, towels and a worksheet and did a "sink or float" experiment. 

And last but not least, we finally made some new play dough. We learned that we can take something (ingredients) and create something new. The kids are still thinking about what material play dough is though. Hm, good question 👀

   

The fotos were made by and with the children. Not bad we think 👍

Information for Parents 23rd January 2020

Information for Parents

Sienna, a 3 year old girl from New Zealand, has joined our Kindergarten. She will be in Blue Team. Please give a warm welcome to her and her family.

Schedule for February and March

Feb. 3rd - 7th:  Our 3-Way Conferences will be held from Feb. 3rd to 7th. Please sign up for your preferred date and time on the doodle list (you can find it on our previous blog post).

Feb. 24th - 28th:  The interns will be away this week for professional development.

March 2nd:  Yellow Team, together with Preschool, will visit Shoei Kindergarten for a Hinamatsuri (doll festival) celebration.

Happy New Year of the Mouse

The Pre-Kindergarten children came back to class happily and celebrated the New Year and their new unit "Animals and Food" by having a tea party.

They talked about the items necessary for such a party and started to set the table with cups, plates, and cakes. After further discussion, more items were added. Everyone helped and had some ideas and in the end the children enjoyed their party with a mouse themed cookie.

To make an additional connection of the new subject in the world around them,  the class then went on an excursion to the Fashion Museum to see a wonderful exhibition about afternoon tea settings. The children were quite fascinated by the beautiful items and had many comments and questions.

What a great start into the New Year of the inquisitive Mouse ! Happy 2020, everyone !

17th January 2020 Early Years Small Garden

We started to make a small garden in the Early Years back yard. We planted some tulip bulbs in December.  Suprisingly, the tulip buls are showing their buds already. Children are happy to see the buds and have been touching them very softly to find out how they feel. Emily made a nice sign where the bulbs are planted.  




3.Dec.201910.Jan.2020

11th January 2020 Happy New Year

We hope you had a nice winter break. Welcome back and Happy New Year! 

This year we start with our 3rd unit of inquiry “ How the world works”. Children will learn about materials which we use in our daily life. Here is an overview of the unit:

What is the Central Idea?

Our world is made up of different materials 

What are the lines of inquiry?

- Recognizing different types of materials 

- Uses of materials

-Experimenting with materials to find out how they behave

What will the main activities be?

Students will discover and discuss what materials different things are made from (paper, wood, plastic, fabric, metal, glass, etc). Students will work on sorting different items into groups based on different characteristics and physical properties. They will also explore using different materials in a variety of ways to discover why some materials are used for different purposes. Students will experiment by creating things out of different materials in order to discover how materials behave.

What are the Learner Profiles?

Inquirer, Thinker

Action you may see taken at home:

Students might show an interest in asking or telling about what materials things are made from. Students might explore properties of materials at home, or be curious about what properties different materials have. Students might try to recreate some of the experiments, such as what “Floats and Sinks”, or what is magnetic or not. They might demonstrate an understanding of and discuss the characteristics of materials’ texture (smooth, rough, fluffy) or describe things as being heavy, light, hard, soft, flexible, etc. 

Please inform us via email if you see action being taken at home!

Schedule for January/ February

January

23rd   Sweet Heart Kindergarten will visit us for play (second time)

February

3rd-7th  3 way conferences

Excursion is planed. More detail is coming soon.