Last week we celebrated Zoe's Italian great grandmother's 100 birthday! We sent her a video message from K1AC to let her know we were thinking of her on this special day. After we sent the video message and talked to Zoe's mum, we became very interested in the number 100:
The children wanted to see if we could count to 100 by writing all the numbers. We started as a group and continued independently during our free play. As we recorded the numbers, it was a great opportunity to reflect on what we know about numbers and make connections to our lives:
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As the end of K1 gets closer, we've been getting more and more curious about what's going to happen next year. Today we had the chance to visit K2HH and ask them some questions about what we can expect in Kindergarten 2:
For the last two weeks, our Star Name has been PIGS! This name helped us to consider two letters we find challenging: P & G. Obviously we don't have any pigs in our class though, so how were we going to do the Star Name interview? Right away we made the connection to the story of The Three Little Pigs, which some of us have been exploring and retelling during our free time. We decided to write a letter to the little pigs, inviting them to come to our classroom. We put the letter in our class mailbox and waited. And waited.... Finally we got a reply! One of the three little pigs would be coming to visit us! In our excitement, we started to discuss what it would look like to have a little pig visit our classroom. Some children thought it would be impossible for a pig to leave the farm, but others thought that if the farmer drove the pig he could get to ISS. Some of us said that we didn't want a pig in our classroom because it would be too dirty. We decided to document our thinking using a compass points chart with a space for our Needs, what we're Excited about, what we're Worried about, and what we Suggest: Finally it was the day of the pigs visit! We could hardly contain our excitement! We asked the pig our prepared interview questions and he told us all about his experiences with building houses and the big bad wolf! Very quickly we started to notice something a little bit funny about this pig. It didn't look like what we had expected. It had people hands and people shoes! And only a mask, not a real pig face. But who was the pig? Watch the video to see if you can figure it out! On Sunday, June 1 Axel will celebrate his 5th birthday...same day as Ms. Alison except she's not turning 5! :) Yesterday we celebrated Axel's birthday in class with some yummy chocolate chip cookies with whipped cream. Some friends in the class made cards for Axel which they presented to him before we sang Happy Birthday. Have a fun birthday weekend Axel!
What a fun day! And how lucky were we that the rain waited until we were out of the pool? Thanks to all the mums and dads (and baby brothers!) who came out to support us at our very first swim gala. We had a great time playing games at nine different stations. Before we left school, we also had fun following along with what the older children were doing at swim gala through Twitter. Thank you Mr. Nathan and Mr. Dino for organizing! On Monday, we visited the'Big Eyes, Big Minds' Singapore International Children's Film Festival as part of our current unit of inquiry about storytelling. We viewed the programme 'Magic Symphony' which had 12 short films. We loved the films and were able to retell them, describe our favourite parts and explain how they made us feel. We documented the story of our visit using the new Adobe Voice app: The films also inspired us to ask some questions about films and their connections to stories. We weren't sure how to answer our questions, so we collected ideas about some experts we could ask. Since Ms. Mabel was the host of the film festival we thought she would be our best option. We prepared this AudioBoo recording for her and emailed it. Hopefully we are able to get some answers to our inquiries soon!
We have been having so much fun in our swimming lessons and are excited to show off our skills this Friday at the Elementary School Swim Gala. Last week, Denzil's mum kindly took some videos to document the progress we are making. Enjoy! Happy birthday to Lea who turns 5 years old today! Thank you to Lea and her mummy for the delicious cupcakes and goody bags!!
Today we attended a musical theatre performance of Rapunzel. Some of us already know this story well and we have all been explored it with Ms. Caz in one of our Art classes. What an exciting opportunity for us to visit the theatre. For some of us, it was our very first time! We talked about what it means to be a good audience and how the actors organize themselves to present the story. Next week we will talk more about the show and the creative and original version of the story that was told. Yesterday the Grade 9 guitar band visited us from the high school. They played two Disney songs: 'Under the Sea' and 'The Bare Necessities'. Not only did we love listening to the beautiful guitar music and thinking about some of our favourite movies, the visit also gave us a chance to make connections to our current unit of inquiry (CI: People share stories in many ways). Before the performance started, Ms. Alison asked a question: Do you think music tells a story? There was a mix of opinions. After we returned from the performance, she asked the same question again:
We then watched video clips of the songs from the movies. We were listening to the same songs, but this time there were words, characters and animations. This time, more people thought a story was being told:
When we listened back to an AudioBoo recording of the Grade 9's performance, less of us thought a story was being told:
This Friday we will be attend the Rapunzel stage musical which will give us another opportunity to think about if and how music tells stories. |