Look at what we have been doing this week.....

This week in Kindergarten we have been very busy reading, writing, adding, subtracting, creating and playing.  We had our buddies visit and help us with making our chosen craft, then we had shared play with Ms Ishbel's class. The children were very excited to go to a new class and see all the things they could explore, so half of us went over to Room 2 and then half of Ms Ishbel's class came to us.  It was so great to see all the children playing together and making new friends.  We can't wait to do it again next week!!

Buddies

Language, Journal Writing and Reading

We have been practicing our letters by naming the letter and the sound that it makes.  We have also been painting the letters of the alphabet and making sure that we always start at the top and move down when writing each one.  We have also been spending time everyday on our sight words. We are making sure that we can recognise them not only on our flash cards but also around the classroom, in books, during guided reading and using them when writing a sentence.  The children are doing a great job!!

Maths

Every morning we have a calendar question, it can be anything from data, sorting, measuring or counting.  This week we have had a couple of very fun questions.  One of them was to sort out our shoes into groups.  The children put their shoes on and decided who was going where.  Look at how we grouped ourselves.

We made five groups

 flip flops/Jandals

Trainers

Shoes

Crocs

Princess shoes

We have also been very busy in our Maths centres adding and subtracting.  We have used ladybirds, ducks, butterflies, cars, trains and even dinosaurs to help us add things together and then take them away.  The children have really enjoyed telling stories as they add and subtract.  We have also been using number lines to show adding on and of course or favourite addition hopscotch.  We have been doing lots and lots of counting in many different ways.  We have been counting all the way to 100 by ones, counting in 2s to see how far we can go and also counting in 5s and 10s. We have been playing some very fun Maths games outside to help us with all our counting and singing lots of counting songs. Please see under our Maths section for the songs.

Check out how busy we have been:

Finally just a quick reminder that next week school will be closed Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for Water Festival.  School will be back on Monday November 10.

Have a great weekend everyone!  Enjoy any celebrations you may be having!!

Mystery Reader

A very big THANK YOU to Thilde Skaanning (Anton's mum) for coming in today to read to us.  The children were trying all morning to figure out who the mystery reader was going to be and got a big surprise when Thilde arrived.  

The book "Da Lille Madsens hus blaeste vaek" was written and illustrated by a fantastic Danish author Jacob Martin Strid. The book is written in Danish but Thilde very kindly translated the book into English for the children as she read!!

If you would like to come in and read to the children please click on the following link:

Mystery Reader

It's Friday!!

We have almost reached the end of another month so in KG this week we have been doing a lot of reviewing, revisiting and reflecting.  As well as learning lots of new things!  

We have also welcomed a new student to our class - Sophorn Keo.  All of the children have made Sophorn feel right at home in our classroom.  It is so nice to see them taking care of each other and helping out as much as possible! Just awesome!!

Many of the children during table top time in the morning have been busy building all sorts of amazing things. Here are a few pictures of what some of the girls have been up to.

Maths

This week we have been spending time on making sure that we are writing our numbers correctly. We have a very funny rhyme we have been saying as we write the numbers. Many of the children all ready knew the rhyme and they have been helping to teach me and the other children in the class. Once we have practiced it a bit more I will post it here for your children to share with you ;-) We have also been playing a great game called "Race to Trace" it is lots of fun.

We have also been adding numbers to five and ten and now starting to look at subtraction/taking away.  We know that when you add two numbers together the answer is bigger so when you take numbers away the answer gets smaller. The children have been outside using the number lines to show one more or one less.  They have also been running to find the number that is more than or less than, playing our favourite - addition and subtraction hopscotch and many more activities to help them with understanding these concepts.

See us in action:

Language

I have been so impressed with how hard the children have been working on learning their sight words.  They find them around the classroom, in books, around the school and even at home!  We are now working toward the next 20 words!  We have also been practicing our Jolly Phoincs which gives us the letter and the letter sound and writing upper case and lower case.  

Last week we looked at making words that ended with AT so this week we have been looking at all the words we can make with the ending IT.  We found a great clip on "Alphablocks" and the children really interact with it.  

Please follow this link to view:
Alphablocks - words ending with it

and the children have been working so hard in their reading groups.

I was very lucky to make it to see the children swimming yesterday and WOW!!! the children are just amazing!!  I was blown away by how confident all of the children are in the water and how far they have come in just a short time. Our class want to say a huge THANK YOU to Mr Andy who has developed all of the children's skills and given them the confidence to be real risk takers.  Mr Andy you're a STAR!!

Check them out!!

Also at the end of the day today we had our buddies come and help us plan what craft we are going to make with them next week.  We chose a selection of crafts that we were interested in making from a great book "Easy Earth-Friendly Crafts in 5 Steps".  Then with the help of our buddies the children read what materials they will need to make their chosen craft.  They went through the list and ticked the ones that they have at school all ready and then identified the items that they will need to bring from home.  We can't wait till next week when we get to make them!!

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Phew what a week!!

We have had an extra busy week this week even with a day off on Wednesday! We have had a mystery reader, a guest speaker, time with our buddy class, and team time to mention a few things. Also as always very busy reading and writing in Language.  Solving Maths problems to make five and ten. Discussing systems for our Unit of Inquiry along with many activities of sorting and organising our photos of a system in school and labeling them - first, next, then, after, finally. We have also be thoroughly enjoying reading fabulous books by Eric Carle.

Mystery Reader

A very big THANK YOU to Ingo Strube (Carla's Dad) for being our first parent mystery reader. The Children thoroughly enjoyed having someone new come into the class and read  to them - it was a great choice of book!!

"Lotta's Bike" By Astrid Lindgren

Please don't miss out on the chance to share a story with our class.  Follow this link to sign up:

Mystery Reader - sign up

Language

We are all really enjoying our guided reading groups.  We are recognising our sight words in the books and using the pictures to help us with the understanding of the story.

We have almost finished our books that we have been making.  We have modeled off Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"  The children have had a great time making them and we have had lots of laughs.

Carla is making "The Very Hungry Unicorn"

Wonglee is making "The Very Hungry Shark"

Albert is making "The Very Hungry Mouse"

Edwin is making "The Very Hungry Dragon"

Floyd is making "The Very Hungry Dinosaur"

Maths

We have been adding two numbers together to make five and ten this week. We have been using our fives frame and our tens frame to help us.  We used two different coloured counters to help us see the numbers that we are adding together.  We now know that when we add two numbers together we can flip the numbers  around because they will still give you the same answer.

eg: 6+4=10 is the same as 4+6=10

Here we are doing lots of counting.

Unit of Inquiry

We took five pictures of a system in school and then put them in order - First, Next, Then, After and Finally.  The children did a great job putting them in the correct order and they knew the systems very well.  

Art system

Music system

Swimming system

Music system

Sharing our posters with everyone

We were also very lucky to have a guest speaker in today.  A very big THANK YOU to Rebecca Konrad (Renia's mum) who gave us a brilliant talk on transportation systems.  We learnt how a bike that is made in a different country ends up in the country where we buy it.  We saw how big containers can travel by train, ship, aeroplane or truck. We also got to do a fabulous activity where the children had to get a bike to me in Phnom Penh. They had to show the different forms of transport they could use to get it to me. The children had a great time and really learnt a lot.

Look at us:

and finally a big CONGRATULATIONS to Renia, Albert and Anton on recieving a very special award each.

Albert showed that he was a real THINKER.  He works so well in groups and all by himself.  He is great at organising the people in his group for an activity and is always helping others if they are unsure of what to do.  Fabulous job!!

Anton showed that he likes to INQUIRER into things.  He has been very interested in our Unit of Inquiry on systems and is always involved in activities and sharing his ideas.  Fantastic!! 

Renia also showed that she is a real INQUIRER.  She has presented to us some pictures from her Grandfathers business that related to our Unit of Inquiry on systems and explained the process.  Outstanding!!

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Friendly Reminder....

Remember there is No School or After School activities this Wednesday 15th October.  We will be back as usual on Thursday the 16th October.  Have a relaxing Wednesday everyone.

Language, Maths and Unit this week.....

This week has been full of reading, sight words, jolly phonics and guided reading groups.  The children have been doing such a fabulous job with all of these activities and everyone wrote their very own sentence this week for journal writing!!  Amazing!!  We have also been talking about words that end with 'at' we watched a great episode of "Alphablocks" that has been helping us find all the words. 

Please click on the link to watch it with your children.

Alphablocks - at

Check out what we have been doing:

We have been adding to ten this week in Maths.  We have been trying to find all the ways you can make ten.  We have been writing in numbers eg: 8+2=10, using our tens frame, number lines, number hopscotch, unifix cubes and singing lots of songs.

See us in action:

It has been a busy week with Unit of Inquiry.  We have made milkshakes, sequenced pictures, read many books by an amazing author - Eric Carle.  We are now making our very own books based on the story "The very hungry caterpillar" By Eric Carle.  The children are the author and creating a new character so they will have "The very hungry......"  We will be sharing our books with our buddy class - Ms Anita's Grade 2/3.  We have also been walking around the school taking pictures of the systems that we see.  We are now sorting our pictures and deciding which ones are systems and which are not. 

We have had our first 
Mystery Reader!!

 A very big thank you to Ms Paula who came to our class to read!!  The children were so surprised to see "Cat in the hat" walk into our classroom and read us that (The Cat in the Hat) story! It was a very funny book and the children really enjoyed having someone different do a read aloud.  

Please don't forget to sign up.
Click on the following link:

Mystery Reader - Sign up

Have a great weekend everyone!

Milkshake Moustaches

We have had such fun today making milkshakes!!

We had a question this morning on our board asking - What is your favourite flavour?  The children could choose between chocolate, vanilla or strawberry. So the groups were made - 7 chocolate, 6 vanilla and 3 strawberry.

We decided to wait until after our school photos before taking on the task of making our milkshakes and as you will see from the pictures it was a good choice ;-)

The children were given a blender, plastic cups, ice cream, and milk.  In their group they had to discuss how they were going to make the milkshakes with these items.  The teacher gave no instructions but was the robot that the children had to give directions to.  

Vanilla went first:

They decided to each have a turn at putting a scoop of ice cream in the blender, followed by each filling half a cup of milk and putting it in.  We blended it together and had a taste test. The verdict was - lots of milkshake moustaches! 

Next was chocolate:

They spent a lot of time talking about what system they were going to use to make their milkshakes.  They had a hard time deciding on how many scoops of ice cream because some wanted it sweet and the others didn't. They decided on 4 scoops of ice cream and 4 cups of milk. Into the blender it went and after the taste test the verdict was - a big thumbs up!

Finally it was strawberry:

They had the smallest group but made the biggest milkshake!  They each had a turn at putting in a big scoop of ice cream followed by each putting in half a cup of milk.  All into the blender and after the taste test the verdict was - huge smiles!

Once each group had finished we sat together on the mat and reflected on how the groups worked together.  We talked about what they thought worked well and what they would do differently next time.  They all agreed that if you don't follow a system then things can go wrong!  We had a lot of fun making them!!