Week 6

21/9/2015

What a great start to the week we have had. The children have been busy filling their buckets, as I'm sure you've seen on Class Dojo!

This morning we engaged with new experiences in the classroom and finished off some work from last Friday. 

A small group of children continued their conversations and observations of the globe in our class.

"There's Antarctica"

Some children have been expressing themselves creatively using play dough on our circle table. They used the photos of gardens around the world to inspire their creations. 

She used the small pink flowers from this Japanese garden photo to inspire her work today.

We are currently exploring the camera app on our ipad to document our work at school. Today we explored how to take a photo and how to add effects to it. If you have an ipad at home perhaps explore taking photos at home? Discuss what makes a good photo and how many photos we should take of the same thing. 

"I'm very proud of this"

Photos taken by our children this afternoon

Thank you to the parents who have managed to send through photos of the landmarks in their neighbourhood. If you haven't done so, please do try to send them in by Wednesday the latest.

22/09/2015
Fire Drills, Discovery Time and Wondering

This morning the whole school had a fire drill, the children were extremely calm and stayed together as we walked down to our evacuation area. 

This experience seemed to inform and inspire a few construction modifications, when we got back to Discovery Time. 

"This is my house and then I wanted to make it really cool up, and then I put this gun up for shooting people if ever there's an emergency"

We also experimented taking photos of our work and cropping our photos to focus on what we wanted to see. 

Some children began using the building materials in our class to see if the sticks could be taller than their body. 

Checking a photo taken by his classmate to see if his stick is "taller" than his body.

Our class has made a start on our Wonder Wall yesterday. We have been talking about how good learners ask questions to express their wonderings. Such as, "I wonder why it rains". Today we explored some good wondering words like: why, what and where. We looked at the book 'Where's Spot?' to help us explore this concept. We looked at the question mark in the book and noticed that every time we could hear a question, we could see a question mark. 

A small group of children tried their hand at writing some wondering words and question marks. What wonderings can you hear your child exploring at home?

22/09/2015

Have a look at part of our morning meeting.

Our children have been exploring the concept of connection by drawing and viewing maps. Have your children been drawing maps at home? If so, feel free to add these into their Learning Journal. 

25/9/2015

Please tell the children I'm sorry we couldn't make our cupcakes today. We will make them on Tuesday after PMP. Please also tell the children I didn't want to buy the frosting they requested, as all the ones I could see at the shop contained palm oil. We will make our own icing in school. 

One of our parents requested a cheat sheet for what to send to school. I've posted it below. 

Action at Home!

A big thank you to the Henry family for sending in a photo of activities done at home today. They are developing some strong fine motor skills at home.
What is your child doing today? I wonder if there have been any maps drawn of buried treasure in the house? Perhaps after making some play dough, make the names in your family by rolling the play dough into letter shapes. Go for a walk in your house to see if you can find any patterns. What can you use in your house to represent the MRT map? Have fun! 

Threading