This week we looked at one of our favourite stories, No-Bot The Robot With No Bottom, by Sue Hendra. When I opened the cover, the children were surprised to see that the writing had been covered up with strips of paper. Despite this setback, we went ahead with the story, with the children's help. Without any words (letters) we discovered it was much harder to read. We could remember some of the words, and of course the pictures were very helpful (the value of illustrations in picture books must not be underestimated), but the children realised that we were relying on a lot of guesswork to read the story. Later on that day, I removed the paper that was covering the text, and we read the full story, using the words as they were printed, much to the children's enjoyment. The next day I shared a book that is designed to have no text. The pictures, however, were very descriptive. Together we looked at each page and discussed what we could see, what was happening and what the characters might be doing, thinking, or saying. Then each child was given the opportunity to write the story in their own words. As we turned the pages, the children told me what they thought should be written, and I wrote their words down on sticky notes and stuck them to the appropriate page. When we had finished, I was able to re-read the short book back to each child in their own words. The purpose of course was once again to highlight the value and importance of letters (writing). The children were very proud to be the writers of the story.
Later in the day, we looked at another favourite of the children's; The Book With No Pictures, and were able to make an interesting comparison. While we had been focusing on books with only pictures, here was one of the children's absolute favourites which has only writing and no pictures. Despite having no pictures, the book is extremely funny and again emphasizes the power of the written word. You can see the author, B.J. Novak reading an excerpt from the story here on YouTube.
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As we consider our second line of inquiry, the value of letters, we wanted to start by helping the children to begin to understand what we mean by the term 'value'. With this in mind, each child was invited to bring something from home that they consider special or important. Each child was given the opportunity during group time to show their special object to the class, and to talk about it a little. As we expected, many children brought particularly beloved toys, but there were also one or two other items. When all the children had taken a turn, I showed them something that I explained is valuable or important to me; a book. I talked about how much I love to read, and made clear again the connection between (alphabet) letters and the words that make up stories in books. I summarized by explaining that I think that letters are therefore very important, because they help to create the books we love to read. I made sure to select a current favourite of the children to show; The Book With No Pictures, by B.J. Novak. (Incidentally, I highly recommend this book as one to have at home!) After sharing with the group, the children were asked to take a photograph of their own special object. We then printed out each photograph and while the children spoke, I wrote down what they had to say about their valuable item. The children's comments can be seen underneath the photographs in the slideshow below. You can support this work at home, by talking about items or objects which are of value (not monetary value) to you, and to explain why they are important. MathematicsThis week in mathematics, we played bingo games, where the children were asked to connect written numerals (0-5, or 1-10, or 1-20) to the quantities they represent, matching for example the written number 5 with a picture of a ladybird with 5 spots. At home you could try playing games such as matching pairs (memory card games) or bingo to support this understanding. We Can Do Difficult ThingsToday we read Whistle for Willie, by Ezra Jack Keats, a classic children's story about a little boy who wants to learn to whistle, but finds it very challenging. In the end, he succeeds and is very proud of himself. We talked about the fact that sometimes when we are learning to do something, it can be difficult at first. We wanted to challenge the children to try to do something difficult, and gave them the option of trying to put on jackets or shoes unaided, or to have a (guided) attempt at tying shoelaces. Most children wanted to attempt to do more than one, if not all the options! Without exception, every child was very proud of trying to do these things independently. At school we show the children how to put the hood of their jacket on first, and then find the arms one by one. It seems to work fairly well. Almost every child was able to put their jacket on unaided, and one or two can manage zippers on their own. Those who opted to do so had great fun learning to tie laces. I really do encourage you to encourage your child to put his or her coat on, and to put shoes on and take them off unaided. They each proved they can do it today!
Following last week's introduction of a variety of different scripts from different languages, this week the teachers felt it would be interesting for the children to see yet another variety of letters; braille. We first showed a short clip from Sesame Street to the children, entitled Lauren goes to school. In the clip, a young girl, Lauren, introduces herself and explains how she uses her fingers, instead of her eyes to read and write special letters. The children were fascinated to see how the raised bumps that make up braille can be read with the fingers and how Lauren uses a special machine, a braille writer, to write the alphabet as her classmates write the traditional alphabet using a pencil and paper. I would recommend looking at the clip (linked in green above) again together with your son or daughter. After watching the clip, I showed the children a book written in both traditional script (in English) and in braille. They were very intrigued, and enjoyed using their fingers to feel the raised dots. Following this experience, the children were given the opportunity to create a kind of braille version of their own names. Referring to a braille alphabet chart and their name cards, they used lentils and strong glue to 'write' their names. Dress Up DayIn other news, this week we were held the Dress Up Day that the children carefully planned last week. It was exciting to see cats, rabbits, Spidermen, bats, pyjamas and more in our classroom, and the children were excited to show their friends their special outfits. Later on in the day, we had a special visitor. Superman stopped by to sing a few songs with both PS1 classes! Next week we will begin to consider the value of letters. As we will need to define what we mean by valuable, please can I ask all children to bring something from home that is special to them. Of course, please do not send anything of great monetary value. We imagine this children will bring a special toy or picture, for example. Please ensure your child brings something from home on Monday. We will send the 'special/valuable' item home again at the end of the day. Many thanks in advance!
We decided this week to introduce a simple provocation to the children in PS1, with the goal of continuing to reveal just how prevalent letters (of the alphabet) truly are in our world. A week or so back a child asked me if we could have a dress-up (costume/fancy dress) day in school, I took the idea to the group and asked if they would like to come to school one day next week, not in regular clothing, but in something different. I gave three possible options, based on interests we have noticed in class and previous successful dress-up days:
Since the votes were even, we decided not to select only one, but to allow children to choose on the day. Now that we knew which outfits were going to be worn, I explained that we needed to ask permission from Ms. Robyn, our Assistant Principal, in order to dress up. I projected onto the screen while together we constructed the email seen below. The children were excited to spot letters they recognised from their own names and the names of their friends as I typed. We were able to again make the connection that letters form words, which in turn can be read by others. Afterwards, each child drew a picture of themselves in the outfit they hope to wear next week. We waited excitedly to see if Ms. Robyn would reply and give us permission. The next day, we immediately checked the email, and found a response. Hooray! She said yes (see below). This was exciting news, and when Ms. Robyn walked by the Early Learning Centre playground later that day, several children ran to her excitedly to let her know that they had read her email and that they were going to dress up next week. So now we knew what each child wanted to wear on dress-up day, and we had permission from Ms Robyn. The next important step would be to let parents at home know, so that they could help in the preparation of the special clothing. The children were invited to write a letter to their parents. Some wanted to use emergent writing to have a go themselves, others preferred to dictate the letter to me, so I could do the actual writing. Each child then signed their name before putting the letter, along with the picture drawn the previous day, in an envelope which we then addressed to parents. The children were very excited to take their letters and pictures home to share. Dress up day is next Wednesday, 26th February, and we look forward to seeing a variety of superheroes, animals and pyjamas on this day! Next week will be our final week of focus on our first line of inquiry, Letters in our world. After this, we will begin to consider the second line of inquiry, The value of letters. During this part of the inquiry, we will think about how letters are of use to us, and perhaps what the consequences might be if we didn't have letters, or what happens when the letters are incorrect. Stay tuned! International Mother (Home) Languages DayToday we celebrated this day by considering the variety of languages spoken just in our own class community. Our thanks go to Isla's father for coming in to read a book in his native Scots to a group of children, and also to Enrico's mother for reading to the other half of the class in her own native language, Spanish. The children very much enjoyed hearing a story read by our special visitors! Afterwards, we spent time looking at the books written in home languages that the children had brought from home especially for the day. We talked about which languages were spoken in our homes. In our group today we had eight languages represented by the children alone. We are truly very fortunate to be part of such a genuinely international setting.
For the past couple of weeks, we have been considering positional language, particularly focusing on 'next to', 'behind' and 'in front of' but also, because it is fun to explore, thinking about 'in' and 'under'. Last week we looked at photographs of cats and tried to describe where they were in relation to, say, a fence, another animal or a door. The children then had great fun pretending to be cats, and responding to the instruction to position themselves in, under, behind, next to, or in front of a large basket. Of course, getting inside and under caused the most giggling! During the normal course of the week the teachers have tried to be increasingly conscious of using and drawing attention to these positional words in authentic everyday use. Then again this week, we made sure to make time for a particular focus on these terms. We read a short non-fiction book together before taking advantage of a break in the rain to head outdoors and challenge the children in small groups to crawl under or into, stand next to, behind and in front of, and climb on top of the climbing equipment. We found that 'in' and 'under' were more readily understood than 'next to', 'behind' (I reinforced this one by adding 'at the back of') or 'in front of', perhaps because hiding in or under things is a fun thing to do, and therefore sticks in the mind more quickly. It would be helpful if at home you could take any naturally occurring opportunity that arises to use these terms in your home language with your children. Ongoing CorrespondenceIn the continuing adventures of our (previously mysterious) letter-writer, Tilly Teddy, this week we received a plea our nighttime visitor, saying she would love some fresh fruit salad. Naturally, the children wanted to help. I said I would go shopping for the apples, bananas, pears and mandarins that Tilly Teddy said she liked best. The next day, we looked at a 'recipe' for fruit salad. We were able to make the link again it was letters that made up the words that told us of both the ingredients and the instructions for making our fruit salad, in other words, letters were helping us to organise ourselves. Each child helped to wash and chop the fruit salad. Luckily, the fruit salad we made was very large, and there was enough for everyone who wanted to, to have a bowl themselves at snack time (or in some cases to eat three bowls!) It was VERY exciting the next day to come into the classroom and discover another letter from Tilly Teddy. This time, with a selfie photo! In the words of one child "We've solved the mystery! We know what she looks like!" Of course, we responded to Tilly's plea to us to share our favourite books with her, and left a pile for her to read while we were at home that night... She wrote in return to say how much she had enjoyed our choices....and so the correspondence adventure continues. Of course during this ongoing learning engagement we are able to take many opportunities to point out how letters (of the alphabet) are being used in both our correspondence to Tilly, and hers to us.
Please don't forget to spend a few minutes with your child looking for letters around your home. Please then email me two photographs as we will be using these on Monday. Thank you for the photographs I have already received. We have had an exciting start to our new inquiry (Letters help us organise our world) this week. The children arrived on Tuesday to discover some mysterious symbols on the carpet where we have our morning meetings. We mulled over what they could be. Someone suggested that they were numbers. Then another child recognised 'H' and 'p' and named them for us. I explained that they were letters, rather than numbers. I asked where we usually find letters, and the children pointed them out on books, on signs on the wall and on our whiteboard. We wondered what they were doing on our carpet. I explained that I hadn't put them there, and when we asked Ms Shirin, she also said she had no idea where they had come from. Since letters go together to make words, we wondered if we might be able to put them together to make some kind of message. We tried rearranging the three letters in different ways, and I read the results out to the children each time. We were unable to make any sense of them, but saying the silly-sounding nonsense words was very funny! We wondered if someone was trying to tell us something; to communicate with us. When I asked what we should do about the letters we had found, I received this response: "We need to be like detectives!" "Like Paw Patrol!" "We might need magnifying glasses!" Since we couldn't make sense of the message, I suggested we leave the letters up on the board, and that we all keep our eyes and ears open to anything unusual, in case we discovered any more clues. Of their own accord, several children found magnifiers and spent time looking closely at the lettering, and around the classroom, searching for anything that might tell us more about the mystery. We found nothing definitive, and wondered if we might find anything new the next day. The next morning, the children arrived very keen to immediately check to see if there was any sign of the mysterious visitor. They were extremely excited to discover that the visitor had indeed returned overnight, and once again appeared to have left some letters on the carpet for us. This time we found an m, an l and another e. We decided once again to try to shuffle the letters around and see if we could make any sense of them. We tried many different combinations of letters, which I sounded out each time, much to the hilarity of the children; "Hmmmm! 'Hep leno' Does that mean anything to you?" Now we were getting somewhere. We eventually managed to shuffle the letters around to spell 'Help'... It was a very exciting moment when we finally put the letters in a combination that made a meaningful message; "Help me"! But now we were even more confused. Who might have left us letters spelling out "Help me"? We discussed the possibilities as we saw them. The children came up with:
Once again the next morning the children were excited to run to check to see if we had had any more communication. They were initially disappointed to find that there were no large cut-out letters on the carpet. But then they discovered that there was a message after all, this time several sentences on one piece of paper. Even more intriguingly, there was what one child was certain was a bear 'footprint'! Now we had some more detailed communication: "Dear boys and girls, Thank you for your pictures. Will you be my friends?" The children wanted to know who was leaving us the messages. "How can find out?" one asked. I made a suggestion that we write a letter back, and ask our mystery visitor who she or he was. Together, we constructed a letter, which every child present in class signed. Now we were also introducing ourselves to our visitor. This morning we received a letter in response. Again there was a paw print on the letter. Now the children were convinced it was a bear. One child went to find the book 'Where's My Teddy' to point out the bear on the front cover (see below). I wondered aloud if the bear was big or small. After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that due to the small size of the paw-print, the bear must have small paws and therefore must be small. We read the letter. This time the mystery visitor introduced themselves, and asked for some help in finding drinking water... Finally, we knew that it was a teddy bear that was asking for our help, and that her name was Tilly. Tilly Teddy! We composed a letter dictated by the children and written by me, which said:
Dear Tilly, You can drink water in the kitchen. Yes, it is OK, you can play in our classroom. We are sending you a hug. Where are you from? Love from all the children in PS1H Today we will leave it on the carpet again for Tilly to find, and await her response after the weekend... What an exciting way to begin to consider what letters (of the alphabet) are, how they help us and what their value is! This weekend, it would be fantastic if you could find letters in your everyday lives. Examples might be found not only in books, but also on food packaging, computers, telephones, street signs and so on, and to notice and talk about them and their purpose with your child. We have spent a lot of time exploring the link between music and emotions. The children are now experts at identifying a piece of music as 'happy', 'sad', 'angry', 'excited' or 'calm'. This week the children learned that the well-known lullaby Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star began life as a poem (by English author Jane Taylor, first published in 1806). Over time, it was set to music. We talked about why the music chosen to accompany the poem is soft and calm and talked about why it isn't it faster or louder. The children were able to point out that if the music was more energetic or aggressive, it would "keep the children awake", in other words they recognised that the music had a specific job to do -to create a sense of calm and quiet for those who listen to it. Later in the week the children were invited to be musicians themselves. First they were asked what kind of music they wanted to play. In other words, what mood did they want to create; how did they want to make their audience feel? They were then invited to select from a range of different instruments and to experiment with making music to help engender that particular feeling. Some chose to make music to help the audience feel happy, others chose sad or calm, while still others wanted to make scary music so that the audience felt scared while listening. Experimenting with making music to affect people's feelings turned out to be a lot of fun! T,hose who wanted their audience to feel a sense of happiness played more gently and upbeat, those who wanted to have others feel scared chose instruments that were more eerie-sounding, and played louder and faster. Those playing sad music played slowly while those who wanted to create a sense of calm, tended to choose quieter instruments and to play them softly.
This week we also continued to investigate capacity; considering the terms full, empty and half-full, as well as continuing to compare groups of objects, to decide which has more or fewer. Next week we will begin a new Unit of Inquiry, the central idea for which is Letters help us organise our world. This is great timing, since the children have been showing an increasing interest in letters, in particular the first letter from their own name and the names of their friends. Stay tuned to hear how the inquiry begins in the next post! Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. I hope you are able to enjoy the predicted warmer weather. This week we spent some time considering capacity; identifying containers as full or empty and comparing containers to decide which would hold more or less water. We began with a whole group session. I showed the children three different containers designed to drink from; a flask, a bottle and a mug, and asked them which they felt I would be better off using if I were very, very thirsty. There were different ideas about which one might hold the most water. We decided to test the containers to see which had the largest capacity. Using a small plastic cup, we counted how many cups of water could fit into each container, and used number cards to mark each one so we would remember and be able to compare afterwards. We discovered that the flask held five cups of water, the bottle held two and a half, and the mug held one and a half. We talked about the numbers, and decided that five was the biggest number, which meant that the flask could hold the most water, in other words that it had the biggest capacity. Following the group investigation, the children were given time to explore and investigate the capacity of a variety of different containers, using water to fill and empty cups, cylinders and pots. It was fun guessing how many cups of water it might take to fill each container before checking, and especially fun filling containers to overflowing. Experimenting with capacity is something that can easily be incorporated into bathtimes at home, or in the kitchen when making and pouring drinks, for example.
Welcome back and Happy New Year to all PS1H students and their families! For the first couple of weeks after the December holidays PS1 will be returning once more to focus on our first inquiry, specifically looking at ways to become happy and healthy. When we were working on this inquiry earlier in the school year we began looking at the Action for Happiness 'keys to happiness' and had already considered
We wanted to give the children the opportunity to try something new, but felt making green eggs might be a step too far! Instead, we opted to make green vanilla pudding. First, we looked together at the main ingredients, namely milk and pudding mix, and we measured the milk into a bowl. Then the children helped to mix the powder into the milk. Now it was time for the fun part! We added green food colouring, a few drops at a time, mixing well after each addition, and checking on the colour. We ended up with a rather lovely pale green-coloured pudding. The children found this very funny! We put the pudding into the refrigerator to wait until after snack and outside playtime so that it would be properly set. Everyone was very excited to see the pudding when it came out of the fridge. It had set into the perfect pudding consistency. Now was the time we had all been waiting for; time to taste the green pudding! Everyone who tried it loved it and had several spoonfuls (NB each spoon was, of course, washed each time after it had been used, and before putting back into the pudding; there was no 'double-dipping'!) I would strongly urge you to continue to encourage your child to try new foods at home. In class we also watched a short clip from Sesame Street entitled Try, Try Again where Elmo is considering trying Kiwi fruit. He is not sure he will like it, but is encouraged by his friends to try it. The first time he tries a little, Elmo doesn't like it, but his friends say he should 'Try, try again!'. When he does so, he discovers that he does in fact like it. The song emphasizes the fact that often we need to try a new food several times before we grow to like it. We will be referring to both Elmo's experiences with the kiwi fruit, and also our experience with the green pudding during lunch and snack times at school, and we encourage you to do the same at home. Of course, trying new things is not limited to food. It also includes trying new experiences, making new friends and more.
This week, among many other things, we continued to work on developing an understanding of repeating pattern. We have practiced pattern making in many ways, including using objects such as counters, stamps and stickers, and have also used 'body percussion' to create patterns such as 'clap, stamp, clap, stamp'. This time we decided to take advantage of our inquiry's connection with music, and invite the children to create patterns using instruments. First we reminded ourselves what a pattern is; i.e. that it repeats. The children were asked to join in with body-percussion patterns and following this, to see if they could name and continue patterns made from colourful counters (e.g. red, blue, red, blue and so on). We then presented the children with a selection of simple instruments including rhythm sticks, an egg-maraca and a tambourine. I first demonstrated how it was possible to create a simple a,b pattern using two instruments before asking the children to have a go for themselves. This activity proved popular and was an interesting one to observe, because it required not only an understanding of pattern, but also the motor skills and organisational skills necessary to operate first one, then another instrument, which meant sometimes having to pick one up, play it, then put it down and pick up another and play it before repeating again with the first. I was impressed with how the children focused on this challenge, and were determined to master it.
Cookie Swap Thank you to all of you for sending in cookies for the cookie swap today. The children were so excited to be wearing pyjamas, and then to have the opportunity to choose lots of different cookies to take home to share with families. It was such a busy and exciting time that I'm afraid we were unable to take photographs but you will, at least, be able to sample the cookies! I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you very much to you all for your support so far this school year, and to wish you a wonderful holiday together with family and friends. For those celebrating, a very Happy Christmas, and a Happy New Year to you all. See you in 2020! |
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