Working Hard

Measuring, Measuring, Measuring!

We have been measuring all sorts of things this week. We made towers and compared them to see whose was taller and shorter, we counted big steps and little feet, we made a line of blocks the length of our friends body and counted how many blocks long they are. We even made paper planes to see who could throw the furtherest. We are talking about what kinds of things we can measure and what tools we can use to measure.

We went to the football court and measured the width of the court by both little feet and big steps. We could see that we didn't get the same answers as each other. When we talked about it and why that might be we had some great ideas. 

Quotes:
"I think it is different because we all have different sized feet"
"I think people that are bigger have bigger steps than people that are smaller"
"Your feet are bigger, so you don't have as many steps as someone with small feet"

We are vey clever here in Kindergarten.

Buddies

One of our favourite things to do on Fridays is to see our buddies from Grade 2/3. Today we got to share our summative assessments with each other. The children were very proud to show their movies, puppet shows, story books, lego movies and book creators. Our buddies also shared their posters, videos, and creations with us about Cambodia. 

Going Green!

After lunch we did a fun activity where in groups the children had to look at a range of items on their table and sort them. As a group they had to talk about it and communicate their ideas to each other. Once they had decided what they wanted to do and how they were going to show it they had to explain and with help write it on the tables.

It was very interesting to see how each group sorted and oganised the materials.

We had certificates this week. A big congratulations to Jeslyn and Elena on receiving a very special award each.

Jeslyn showed that she is a really good COMMUNICATOR. Jeslyn had such fantastic ideas during our imagination unit and would always share them with us all on the mat or when working with her friends. Great Job!!

Elena showed that she is very CARING. We have started a new Unit of Inquiry on 'Going Green' and she has already noticed lots of things that need to be fixed around our school. She wants the rubbish sysem to be better and for people to care for our school environment. Fantastic thinking Elena!

Mondays from 7:05 to 7:40am @ the Secondary Campus (Front Gate)

Thursdays from 7:15 to 7:50am @ the Early Years Centre (Picket Fence Area)

Fridays from 7:15 to 7:50am @ the Elementary Campus (Gate on Street 370)

Or drop off to the Admissions & Communications Office based at the Early Years Centre anytime. Email communications@ispp.edu.kh for more information or collection of large items.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Rhyming words, Swimming and a Birthday Party!

This morning we played a very funny game. We have been talking about words that rhyme and made lists of all the words that we know that rhyme together. We could even have nonsense words which were really funny.  The game involved each child having a headband, on that there was a word with a picture on it. They then had to go around everyone and try to find the person that they rhymed with. It was a lot of fun!

We had our first swimming lesson for this semester and it was AWESOME!!

We also helped Jeslyn celebrate her sixth birthday today. A very happy birthday to you Jeslyn and thanks for the yummy cake ;-)

 

We're Going Green!

We started our new Unit of Inquiry today!

Please look under the tab 'Unit of Inquiry' for more information.

This morning our board question was asking the children if they could name something that was green. This led us into a discussion about what they thought 'Going Green' meant. We brainstormed together and wrote on the board what we thought. We had some really interesting ideas and discussions. 

The next two days we will spend time sharing what we already know about 'Going Green' and then next week we will be looking at what other information we would like to find out. The children are such fabulous inquirers and I am really looking forward to seeing what actions we can take during this unit.  

I also showed the children various items and asked the children what they thought of when they saw each one. Did they see any similarities/differences? What do you think each item is made of? What would you use these items for? Do you think these items might be linked to our 'Going Green' unit? Do any of these items have anything in common?

We also listened to a very cool song. I have shared the link here:

We're Going Green Song!

Maths

Co-operation and communication

We have started measurement for Maths and have talked about all sorts of ways we can measure. We talked about how we measure a year by months, a month by weeks, a week by days. We talked about how many days are in a week and days in a month. We also talked about how we can measure objects with non standard units - we can use our feet, our hands, cubes, arm spans and our bodies. 

Today we measured our bodies with our feet. We figured out that not all of us have the same size feet and this will make our answers different. If we were measuring distance then to make the test fair we would have to use the same non standard unit each time. But today we decided to work with a partner and use each others feet as our non standard unit for measuring.

Look at our results.



We measured things in and around our classroom too. We put 10 cubes together and with our partner we had to find ten things that were longer than our cubes. The children had to really co-operate with each other and work as a team. While one person was finding the items to measure the other person was responsible for taking the photos on the ipad. 

Here is what we found were longer than our cubes. Thanks to the children for suppling the pictures :-)

To make sure we don't forget all of the things we learnt about patterns we played a fun activity with our partner to see if they could describe the pattern using AB. The children did an outstanding job at working together and were very supportive and encouraging to each other. What awesome learners we have!

Swimming!

Just a friendly reminder that swimming sessions are starting again this week.

Please be sure that your child brings to school each Thursday - their swim suit, a towel and goggles if needed.

Many Thanks!

A short week but one of the busiest!!

Wow! We have had 3 very action packed days this week. Making sure we have put the finishing touches on all of our imaginary stories and ready to present and put on our individual pages on the blog. Over this long weekend I will do my best to up load all of the puppet shows, books, lego movies, imovies and book creators to each child's blog. Please bear with me as the internet has been terrible of late and it is a long waiting game with the process to upload.

Guest Speakers

Today we had Rebecca and Faisal (Renia's Mum and Dad) come and speak to us about International Mother Tongue Language Day (which is celebrated on the 21st of February). A very big THANK YOU to you both for taking the time to come and share with us such an important event.

Please refer to the link for more information 
International Mother Tongue Language Day

They shared with us the importance of keeping your mother tongue language and fostering it with children. This anniversary marks the 15th anniversary of this celebration and it was so great to see how many different languages were spoken in our classroom.

So proud of our class and how open-minded and amazing they all are. To have so many different languages and cultures in one room and be such fantastic friends and learners is just awesome to see!! 

Gingerbread People

We made gingerbread people today. It was so much fun getting to follow a recipe and make sure that we had all the ingredients, used the right amount of ingredients and put things together at the right time! One of our learner profiles for this unit on imagination is "communicator". The children definitely communicated very well with each other and everyone had a turn at helping making, preparing, and decorating the gingerbread people. They were YUM!!

By popular demand here is the recipe for the Gingerbread People.

Gingerbread Men

As you all know we have no school on both Thursday and Friday. Have a lovely long weekend and enjoy any celebrations you maybe having.

Kindergarten Assembly!

Kindergarten will be having their time in the spotlight!!

When: Friday March 27th

Where: Elementary basketball court

Time: 7:45am onwards

Busy, busy, busy......

We all made a new friend on Tuesday! Anton introduced us to his very best friend, Asger from Denmark. Asger joined us for some of Tuesday morning and we showed him what it looked like to be part of our class and what kind of things we do. 

Thanks for coming to see us Asger!

We read a great book by Dr Seuss called 

"If I ran a Zoo"

It is full of very wacky animals. We talked about the different characteristics that these strange animals have and what the children thought about them. We then decided to use our imaginations and create our own animals to go in the zoo. We came up with some very interesting creatures!

Please check under each child's individual page for their creation.

Patterns 

We are still working hard on patterns and the different ways that we can show them. We have been doing number patterns, shape patterns and colour patterns. We have been explaining our patterns using A,B,C,D. We also got very creative and made lines, spirals and zig-zags into patterns.

Our are also concentrating on our subtraction facts with numbers within 10. We have been using a great dice game to help us do this. Also lots of fun stories where we use different manipulatives to create subtraction stories and show what happens. 

   

Reading

We love reading and this week we have been doing back to back reading. The children get to pick three books and then with a partner they sit back to back. They are really enjoying the quiet time straight after lunch where they come into the classroom and cool down after running around at lunch. I can also hear some fabulous readers!!

PE with Mr Andy

Hockey Fun

For the last few lessons, in PE we have been learning about hockey. We have inquired into how to hold the stick, dribble the ball and passing. We have played little matches against each other. - Mr Andy

Place Value and Patterns

With all our creative thinking we have been doing for our unit of inquiry we have also been using that for Maths and creating some great patterns. We made different shapes and designed patterns from molding clay. We went outside and created patterns using shapes, colours and numbers. Also we are learning about place value and what makes up a number. We talked about ones, tens and hundreds and how we can make those numbers using our place value blocks. Then expanding those numbers eg: 32 = 30 + 2 and 32 = 3 tens and 2 ones

Have a look at us hard at work.

Please don't forget that we are still looking for people to come in and be a mystery reader!! This semester we don't have anyone yet, so if you or any other family member or visiting friends would like to come in and share a story please put your name down on the sign up sheet.

Sign up for Mystery Reader

Thanks everyone and have a fabulous weekend!

Creative Kindergarteners!

We have been exploring all sorts of ways to use our imagination this week. Our first creative adventure was to use our imaginations and talk about what we really see when we look at a paper plate! 

"Oh, the thinks you can think" - Dr Seuss

I was so impressed by all of the amazing ideas that all the children had! I'm sure you will agree!!

Secondly we have been making our own stories on an app called "Book Creator." The stories are based on the characters that each child dressed up as last Tuesday. They are looking fabulous and once they are complete I will be uploading them in each child's individual page. 

Thirdly this week we have been looking at stories that we are very familiar with. Such as - "The Three Little Pigs", "The Gingerbread Man", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." We read these stories from big books and in small groups discussed the different parts of a book. Title page, author, characters, setting, problems and solutions. We also talked about how you could change the stories to be something different such as The Three Little Monkeys or The 10 Billy Goats Gruff. The possibilities were endless :-)

We thought about the different ways we could tell a story. The children told me they could act out a story, or make puppets to tell a story. We thought it would be a great idea to make a puppet theatre for our class. So our candy house has been transformed!

Abracadabra.......

Puppet theatre

Many puppets are being designed and shows prepared. I will film each show and as they are completed and upload them onto each child's individual page over the next few weeks. Watch this space.......

Individual pages

Dear families,

We are excited to add a new feature to our Blog this semester!
We would like the Blog to showcase what your child is learning, in particular for you to see what your child has achieved and what they are proud of and want to share.

If you look on the class blog today you will notice that there are tabs over to the right hand side. These are the students' individual pages.  These pages are for the children to select a piece of work or photograph that they are proud of or really enjoyed doing. It will be what they would like to share and be added to their page.

We will try our best to add something every week but as this is new and we are just starting we may have a few delays. We will try our best :-)

Thanks for your continued support.

Kelly