Numeracy Week

Numeracy week was great fun! We played math games with different classes and teachers, dressed up in numeracy related costumes and earned toy money throughout the week to buy small prizes, such as pencils and origami paper, at the shop set up in the gym on Friday.

New friends and parents day

Monday

On Monday we welcomed a new friend to our class. This was a great opportunity to practice our introductions, tell her all about ourselves and ask about her. I also introduced, via video, my son Joji, who was born the previous Friday

Tuesday

Every day of the week we have sharing time. On Tuesday we had a bit of a mix up and had two of the kids share, which was fine and fun (but please be careful to check the home page of the blog to see when your child's turn is). We also did some repair work at park, filling in puddles, had our P.E lesson and started work on our profile pages for our inquiry book.

Wednesday

On Wednesday we did a lot of activities with the older kids in Pre Kinder; we went to the park with Pre Kinder A and played math games in the gym with Pre Kinder B. We also did some math work on our own; seeing how many different shapes we could make with certain numbers of blocks and playing a game or two of shape bingo.

Thursday

On Thursday we didn't manage to get any photos or videos. Oops. It was a good day though; the highlight was starting work on fathers day presents in Japanese class.

Friday

On Friday we had our parents day in the morning (thank you all for coming) where we shared our morning routine of play centers, dancing, red-light/green-light style gym games and circle time. In the afternoon, I took some time off to help my wife move home from the hospital, but everyone else enjoyed their weekly library time and finishing their fathers day presents in the second Japanese class.

Sharing

This week was all about sharing.

The first round of kids to have their sharing time brought mermaid dolls, colour changing magic wands, talking cars and favourite books. At the moment we are mainly getting used to the structure of the activity; how to choose people to ask questions, how long to play with the toy before passing it around the circle, etc. We are slowly building up a repertoire of questions, such as 'is it your favourite toy?' and 'where did you get it?'.

We are also trying to make the most of every opportunity to collaborate with other classes. On Monday we visited Grade 4 to have a look at their wax museum of famous people. This was a great opportunity to practice the questions we have learned from doing our introductions, but with a little twist; 'What's their name?' and 'How old are they?' instead of'what's your name?' and 'How old are you?'.

On Wednesday, and hopefully every Wednesday from now on, when had a joint lesson with Prekinder A in the gym. We started off by splitting into mixed groups and introducing ourselves, then came together to play some counting based games. We played 'rob the nest', estimated how many bean bags each team had retrieved, counted them, then figured out the difference. After that we tried to sort all the bean bags so that there were exactly 10 in each of 15 hoops, checked by counting and figured out how far over or under each one was. It was a lot of fun.

Another fun activity we have been doing lately is 'book reviewing'. Since the start of the unit, the kids have been able to find a few books from the library that fit our lines of inquiry well, such as ones about jobs and families. After reading these, we discuss which of the IB learner profiles fits the story best, then each colour a page from the book and cut out and glue on our personal choice of profile. It is a great way to learn about 'perspective', which is one of out key concepts for this unit.

In Andy's Japanese class we learned how to play a game I was unfamiliar with; it think it's called 'fruits basket' and also involves an Oni: