NTSIS PYP Preschool Newsletter (27th October– 1st November 2019)
Transdisciplinary Theme: How we express ourselves
A big thank you to teachers, parents and children for making the Halloween party a success. Amidst the festive frenzies, inquiries and learning continued in the classrooms. Let us have a look at what were learned last week.
What a busy week…
Nursery:
Central idea:
Feelings and ideas are expressed through play
Lines of inquiry 1: Communication through play
Lines of inquiry 2: Imaginative use of everyday objects
Lines of inquiry 3: Games and toys
At first, the students were afraid of the “dark classroom with black curtains” but they became excited when they saw the “candy house” in the classroom. They really enjoyed dressing up in costumes for Halloween, and sharing candies with students from other PYP classes. They tried hiding and scaring the other children and posing for picture taking in their costumes.
Children actively participated in activities planned by other teachers, such as bowling pumpkins, scary corn maze, throwing hoops on big spider and other activities.
In UOI, the children will be introduced to the different toys in the classroom, and setting simple rules of playing, such as proper ways of playing the toys and sharing toys with peers.
What a busy week…
Kindergarten 1:
Central idea:
Stories inform and excite us
Line of inquiry 1: Stories are connected to our lives and experiences
Line of inquiry 2: Stories make us feel
Line of inquiry 3: Ways to tell stories
We began our 2nd unit of inquiry (UOI): How We Express Ourselves and celebrated Halloween Day on 31 Nov 2019, Thursday.
For the UOI, the children were introduced the subject pronouns (I, you, she and he) and their related verb-to-be (am, are and is) in preparation for next week lesson on different kinds of feelings/emotions via emoji expressions.
For the Halloween Day Celebration, the children experienced how to carve a Jack O’ lantern using a real pumpkin and drew Halloween patterns on their pumpkins. They also personalised their ‘Halloween Candy Bag’ using trash plastic bags.
The Halloween Day was a big success. The K1 classroom was transformed into a dim-noisy ‘Haunted Bowling Alley’ hosting monsters and smiley ghosts as pins and Jack O pumpkins or Bones as bowling balls. The children had much funs rolling pumpkins and bone balls down the bowling lanes.
What a busy week…
Kindergarten 2:
Central idea:
Poetry expresses our ideas and feelings
Lines of inquiry 1: Poetry in music
Lines of inquiry 2: Rhymes and word choices
Lines of inquiry 3: Ideas and feelings in poetry
In the mornings, we continued with phonics and reading, distinguishing short and long vowel sounds in our names and UOI vocabulary. We watched “The Ugly Duckling” story on the big screen and took turns reading the words out loud. We wrapped our week and first UOI with a discussion and reflection drawing on what I learned.
In Math, we reviewed counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to 100, reviewed how to draw basic shapes and practiced simple addition to solve corn maze design problems such as how many pumpkins we can each have and how many panels do we need to make?
In the afternoons, we drew faces on pumpkins, finished our candy house and made panels for our haunted corn maze! We scared people all day on Halloween!
One final scare at the assembly!
Some trick-or-treaters liked haunted bowling the best!
We scared our guests in our haunted corn maze!
This week, we feature specialist subject: Art
For the past several weeks, PYP Nursery, K1, and K2 students have been focused on finishing up their Learner Profile props and preparing for Halloween! We decorated pumpkins, learned how to cut shapes, created fun headpieces, and demonstrated how we are knowledgeable, caring, balanced, and open-minded!
We celebrated Halloween (31st October 2019)
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. At NTSIS, we celebrate ghosts of Halloween with fun games, sweets and laughter We flaunted our creativity and share our joy. What a treat!
