K1 meta-project

It has all been about volcanoes in MZa over the last fortnight! Many children are fascinated by volcanoes and have been making them from clay. After drying and painting, they made them  erupt by filling the craters with bicarb, vinegar and red food colouring. There was a lot of pleasure to be had in seeing the children's awareness of how volcanoes work take a hands-on perspective!

I showed the children a short video after which I asked them if they had any questions about volcanoes. The responses below will provide many directions in which to expand our inquiry in coming weeks…

"How did the earth get Lava?"
"I don't know why volcanoes make fire."
"Why does lava come from volcano?"
"Why do volcano blast go straight up?"
"How do people go near volcanoes?"

In addition, many children continue to have firm ideas about how planet Earth was formed...
                                                           

It's wonderful to see the children so engaged, making connections and becoming so knowledgeable about the world through our meta-project!

K1 Service

Thank you for sending in the shopping money for our children to purchase items to fill the Project Get Ready For School bags which the class have been busy decorating. They are now full and ready to be presented to the recipients. We made the first presentations on Thursday afternoon...to two local school friends who have spent a couple of days with us over the last fortnight. Our new friends were very excited to receive the bags!

UN Celebrations

We have had an exciting time during the last week, with our UN Day and Food Festival. The children loved completing the craft activities and filling their 'passports' with their parents, then went on to sing beautifully on stage. I was very proud of them...as, I know, were you! Everyone looked fabulous in their national costumes...

Thank you to those parents who were able to help during today's Food Festival. We enjoyed having you with us to enjoy the delicious fun!

Our meta-project... The World.

Many children continue to be fascinated by the Moon…what it looks like, the way it moves in space, and what it means when it moves around the earth.

"The moon is green and also blue."

"It's white all the time." 

"The moon has to be yellow at nighttime."

A couple of weeks ago I posed to the class the question "What is inside the earth?" The responses were very interesting!….

       "Aliens."

"That black hole."

"The earth inside is like a rainbow."

Last week, many children were fascinated by a new model globe of the earth which arrived in our classroom. The globe featured a removable cross-section which showed Earth's interior.
It was suggested that we walk around on Earth's crust, and that the mantle provides the lava which comes from volcanoes.
The children were invited to participate in craft activities to illustrate their understandings.

"This is Bulgaria, this is Singapore. I need Australia."

Storytelling

On Friday 7 November, we were fortunate to take part in a storytelling session with Cassandra Wye. The children were able to perform the actions and sounds of animals, which was a great interactive experience for them. The message in the story was about the importance of sharing - a big part of life in K1! The story was Australian, which makes a fitting introduction to our upcoming exploration of stories from different countries, as part of our UN celebrations.

If you have a picture book featuring a story, folktale or fairytale from your family's home country which you would be happy to lend to us so that I can share it with the children next week, please do send it in via your child's blue folder.

Playeum's The Big Draw...It's our world. 

Yesterday we had a wonderful visit to The Big Draw. There were a variety of activities on offer which linked beautifully to our meta-project, offering opportunities to make meaning about the world in a hands-on, exploratory way. Many children were really engaged in creating clay trees to add to the rain forest, adding to the papier-mache city scape, discovering some plants and weeds of Singapore, and using leaves to create images on paper.
Other children were fascinated by the picture wheel, the shadow wall, and really enjoyed drawing on the building's floors and walls!

Our class are becoming very excited about UN Day next Friday, and are looking forward to sharing activities in the classroom, and then performing for their families.

See you there!