September, a month to remember

September was a busy month, so I apologize for the lack of updates to the blog. This post will culminate everything we have done in the month of September.

We did a lot of planning and preparation for two events. One being the International Children's Festival that happened last Friday, and the other being our Sports Day that is fast approaching. For ICF we were partnered with Ms. Stacy`s third grade class and together we made an alpaca paper craft for our Peruvian themed room. 

I hope you all enjoyed the ICF and the work we put into our. Here is the photo of our group at the ICF 

In the gym we have been practicing a lot of group based activities to strengthen our team work. We did a lot of parachute exercises that the students enjoyed a lot. Sometimes we even partnered with the PreK B class in order to all practice together.

In the classroom we have been working on our sports day dance, the students are practicing every day in order to prepare for sports day. Here is a sneak peak at them practicing in the classroom.

A few updates:

We will be going on our term 2 trip to the natural history museum on October 4th. 

The 26th of September will be our monthly birthday party for Asim and Julia!

Stay tuned for more.

- James Barbosa

Week 19, short week

Hey everyone,

As you already know last week was a short week for the school due to two PD days at the beginning of the week. Still, it didn't stop us  from going further into our pursuit of knowledge. Last week we learned more about living things. We learned about the growth of a human from a baby to an elder. We also learned about forest animals and rain-forest animals by making a big mural of a forest and everything in a forest.

Unfortunately it is too hot outside so we were not able to take the students outside out of their own safety, so we spent our play time in the gym. 

A few updates:

On September 20th we have our international children's festival and our class is teaming up with the grade 3 class to decorate our classroom to represent the country of Peru.

The class is also preparing for our sports day festival on October 11th. 

That is it for this week, stay tuned for next week.

- James Barbosa

Week 18, living things.

Last week we officially began our unit about living things. The students understood the concept pretty easily. They understood and knew what living things are, and we learned some new vocabulary to use in this context. Words like breathe, move, and grow. As we continue our unit we will learn more vocabulary that they can use when referring to living and non-living things.

The first few days of the week we learned about what is a living thing and what isn't. I would show them a living thing, or non living thing and they would say yes or no.

During our gym time we played many type of games focusing on team building exercises. In this game they had to try and put as many balls in the net as they could in 3 minutes.

Last week we did quite a few art projects. They painted their own paintings of living things, as well as sculpted living things from clay.

As you can see we got some young artists in the making!

 

The goal for PreK A is for them to be able to read words and sentences by term 3 and we are hard at work every morning memorizing words and trying to reach the next level. Please encourage them to work on it at home! It will help a lot!

That all the updates I have for you for now, stay tuned for more.

- James Barbosa

Term 2 is a go!

Welcome back, everyone. I hope you all had a great summer vacation. In term 2 we will be focusing on our unit 'How the world works' we will be learning about how living things go through many changes. What are living things? What are Non-living things?

During the first week of class we spent the week getting back in the routine of things. The kids were coming back from summer vacation so they needed to adjust to the classroom again. After the first few days we were back on track!

Throughout the week we reviewed the sight words that everyone has been practicing throughout term 1. I have noticed a lot of progress with the students ability to identify the words.

We had a few show and tells last week, it was also Kinryo's first show and tell!

Last week we also played more game focused activities in the classroom. For example games like duck duck goose.

That's all for week 17. Stay tuned for more.

- James Barbosa

Week 14

its the second last week of the term, unfortunately we couldn't go outside to the park all week due to the rain, and if it wasn't raining the humidity was too high. But we still had a chance to run around in the gym.

For the past two weeks I have been teaching the students about sportsmanship when playing games where there is a winner and a loser. Games like dodge ball and soccer are games that we have been playing. At first students were quite emotional when winning or losing and would react poorly, but as we played more and more they began to learn how to act with good sportsmanship. Instead of jumping up and down saying "we won, we won!" they started saying "good game", and whenever they lost instead of crying, or becoming angry at losing they began saying "good game".

Still a work in progress though, after all they are only 4 or 5 years old so their emotions get the better of them. But learning about good sportsmanship at an early age is always good.

On one of the last days last week we set up a gymnastics obstacle course and the students seemed to really enjoy it.

In the classroom we have been working a lot on our math, being able to count up quickly, addition and number ordering.

I set up an interactive game on the smart board and everyone was able to play a numbers whack-a-mole game.

That is all for this time, stay tuned.

- James Barbosa

Week 13 - PreK A first field trip!

Hello everyone, last week we went on our first field trip. We went to Nifrel, which is located in Expo city. Nifrel may look like an aquarium, but it is actually called an aquazoo.

There were a lot of interesting things to see inside. There were various water tanks of fish in the beginning. There was an interactive table top that reacted when you touched it.

As you went through Nifrel you come upon this really interesting room that was very dark. It is meant to show fish that live in darker waters. We saw jellyfish, and other weird kind of sea creatures.

The area after this was really cool. There was a large sphere that emulated how water moves, and looks. Judging by the amount of time the students spent in this room I would assume this was their favorite part!

We entered a few rooms where we could see animals in their watery habitats. For example, a hippo, and a few alligators. 

But we also saw something we didn't expect to see at Nifrel. A white tiger!

Towards the end we entered a room where the animals roam freely, we were told not to touch the animals but we were able to get pretty close to them. We saw penquins, beavers, and many times of birds, big and small.

At the end of the day the kids were pretty tired. On the bus ride home many of them fell asleep. The trip was a lot of fun and I look forward to planning another one! 

Stay tuned for more updates!

- James Barbosa