Safe & Unsafe Touches

Today Mr. John came to our classroom to begin talking with us about child protection. He began by introducing us to what a 'safe touch' is. We learned that safe touches are wanted and make us feel good. They make us smile. Touches such as handshakes, high fives, pats on the back or wanted hugs from loved ones can all be safe touches. Next week we will continue learning more about this with Mr. John and will examine unsafe touches a little more.

In the meantime, please sit down with your child and take a look at the paper he/she is bringing home today. You can fill out the backside together. This does not need to be returned to school; rather, it's an opportunity to open dialogue at home.

 

New Unit of Inquiry!

We have just begun a new unit of inquiry in kindergarten, and throughout the weeks ahead we will be exploring what it means to be human through the Primary Years Program (PYP) transdisciplinary theme "Who We Are".

The central idea for this unit is "We explore the world with our bodies". We will be looking at how our bodies help us learn and discover new things, and the senses will play a large role in our learning.

As a provocation to heighten interest in our new unit and encourage questioning and thought, a number of items were placed throughout the room. The only direction we were given was to explore the items.

After spending time closely examining the items, we gathered together and used words to explain what we noticed. These words were charted so we all could see:

 

The next day we revisited our words and looked at pictures of ourselves exploring the items on the table. We used our mathematical knowledge of sorting to put them into groups that made sense. At this time we were given no knowledge or explanation of the basic five senses, but we naturally grouped them that way:

Our end product resulted in this:

We will be using this as a stepping stone into the senses and how we use our bodies to explore the world. As we continue on our journey through this unit we will begin labeling these groups with the sense that each group depicts and which body part(s) we use with each sense. We will keep you posted on our ongoing discoveries and inquiries!

Meskel

Yesterday was Meskel in Ethiopia, and we learned about and celebrated this holiday in school on Friday. We began our day by attending a play put on by all third grade classes. They taught us the history behind Meskel and we learned a bit about Ethiopia's history. Their singing and acting was quite impressive. I have added several videos to the link below, so if you missed the performance please take a moment to view them!

Kindergarten followed the play by celebrating with our own coffee ceremony, put on by our very own KG teaching assistants. We enjoyed popcorn, bread, and the aromas of coffee and incense. We also enjoyed traditional music and learned some Ethiopian dance moves.

After our coffee ceremony we joined the whole school for the lighting of the demera, which commemorates the legend of Queen Helena and the finding of the true cross. This celebration was a wonderful way to learn more about our host country and provided a rich cultural experience for us all. Please take some time to go through the following pictures with your child.

Meskel Celebration Photos

Come View Our Photos!

If you are here tomorrow for the Meskel celebration, take a moment as school is let out to look at the photos outside our classroom. We finally got them hung up and you'll love reading our interviews!

Meskel Reminders

Tomorrow we will be celebrating Meskel at ICS. Please help us do so by:

• Encouraging your child to wear traditional Ethiopian clothing, or white/light colors
• Bring a water bottle and hat to take with us for the demera lighting

Parents: Remember that you are welcome to join us for the ceremony on the upper basketball courts just behind our classroom. You are also invited for a coffee ceremony in the morning. You should have already received information from ICS regarding this. Please also follow the instructions sent by ICS in regard to pick up of your children. Dismissal is early tomorrow.

We are looking forward to a wonderful, traditional celebration of our host country tomorrow!

Publishing Party!

Another exciting experience from last week involved taking action in regard to our line of inquiry "We celebrate literacy". We did this by celebrating ourselves and the amazing authors we have become. Class 5B students graciously welcomed us into their class and listened as we shared our stories. They were wonderful mentors as they provided feedback about our work. We listened to their positive words and their suggestions as to how we could make our stories better. We reflected upon their ideas after returning to our classroom, and some of us have already started implementing their suggestions. Thanks again fifth graders for celebrating with us. We can't wait to celebrate YOU as authors sometime soon as well!

~ take a closer look at our celebration ~

Also take a few minutes to watch some of feedback and encouragement the fifth graders gave to us. Don't miss the smiles on our faces when our books are shared!

Yana the Author from Kacey Molloy on Vimeo.

 

Lyla the Author from Kacey Molloy on Vimeo.

Field Trip

Last week we had the wonderful opportunity of visiting Central Printing Press.

This visit provided the opportunity to see how books, magazines and brochures are published. We are 'publishing' all kinds of books in our classroom, and having the opportunity to see an official publishing company was quite the experience. We were amazed to see the many machines and people that work to make the things we see on our shelves everyday. If your child hasn't already told you all about this experience, please encourage him/her to do so! You can take your child on a "walk through the pictures" so that he/she can describe things of interest. Take a look:

To view all field trip photos, visit our Flickr album

We took some time to reflect on this experience the following day. We noted what we saw, what we learned, and what our favorite part of the field trip was. Take a moment to look and listen to one example: