Making All Kinds of Connections!

Cooperation at its finest!!!

Inquirer am I,

Inquirer am I,

I like to learn about the world

I learn by asking why.

We are so excited about the great questions our Explorers have been asking.  Inquiry, our Learner Profile this week, is something kindergarten students are naturally good at, but seeing them to ask questions about how things are connected, formed, and their beliefs is amazing! Our key concepts for this unit were Form, Perspective and Connection.  It’s nice to see our students apply and share their skills.

Aside from our UOI, we are still working on letter identification, formation/sounds and rhyming.  Keep practicing at home…it’s working!

In math we are counting by 1’s and 10’s to 100 as we are also focusing on understanding the relationship between numbers and quantities.

Case Western Dental came by for a visit this week.  We talked about the Rule of 2.  Be sure to ask your child what that means (brush 2 times, for 2 minutes, 2 times a day).

What's the Rule of 2?  Why is it important?

We need your help!  Untied shoes are getting the best of us and are a certain hazard as we go about our day.  If your child cannot tie his/her own shoes yet, please work on this skill at home.  We are practicing everyday, but the more help the better.

Our fabulous Art teacher, Ms. Lipka has a blog now, please take a look and follow along.  So many wonderful things are happening!!!

ART BLOG (click here)

Picture Day

Picture day-October 12

More information will be coming home soon.

Lego KidsFest

Lego KidsFest

I was just told about the Lego KidsFest that is coming to Cleveland's IX Center this November and thought I'd pass the information along.  I can only imagine what fun our Explorer's would have there!

**Click on the link above to find out all the details.

Open-minded Explorers

Our Grandparents’ Day Celebration was such a nice event.  Our Explorers were very excited to see their families and we even had a few “grandparents” from the university that came to see us as well.  Thank you for supporting us either in conversation at home, in attendance, or both.

In addition to Grandparents’ Day we also learned about the Moon Festival that is celebrated in China.  Zhao Lao Shi even brought us various moon cakes to try.  As Open-minded (Learner Profile) Explorers we were eager to try this special treat and showed appreciation (Attitude) for a tradition in another culture.

 Moon cakes 

                                

This week, we also explored the idea of time around the world.  It was exciting to see everyones’ faces as they realized that as we were reading the book some people were eating breakfast, for some it was the middle of the night, and so on.  We used a special application called World Clock on the iPad to introduce this concept and read a wonderful book titled Somewhere in the World Right Now by Stacey Schuett.  It sure has been fun to peek back at the iPad and wonder what other countries are doing at any particular moment.

We also looked at activities children do all around the world and found out that kids are kids no matter where we live.  We may have unique appearances and dress, use different materials in our play, but from country to country we are all linked by lots of similarities and activities.  To Be a Kid by Maya Ajmera and John D. Ivanko is a book filled with beautiful photographs that we used to explore this topic.

CURRICULUM NIGHT TUESDAY

We are very excited to share our curriculum with everyone on Tuesday night from 6:00-8:00.  We ask that adults only attend this event since teachers will be doing presentations about IB, and expectations for the year. This is a great opportunity for parents to understand the curriculum better and ask questions. With that said, your presence is important to us so if you absolutely need to bring your child, we understand. We just ask that your child follow the essential agreements during the presentations and listen respectively. 

Remember Tuesday is an Early Release Day.  All students will be dismissed at 11:30.  After-care through the Y is available for those children already enrolled in the program.

A lot in 4 days!

Prin, Prin, Principled

I am Principled.

I always like to do the right thing.

I am Principled!

How is it a 4 day week often feels busier than a 5 day? That is certainly an inquiry worth exploring!  Our kindergarteners were busier than ever.  A few things we worked on were our Unit of Inquiry, our Learner Profile Principled, counting to 100 and forming the tricky number 2, measuring our bodies and reporting our findings, the letters M, T, R, and S, tackled the new sight words (can, me, I and red) and introduced our daily journal.  Whew!

Our Unit of Inquiry continued to investigate our personal uniqueness and how special we all are.  We also took a look at the world and imagined if everything was exactly the same and what that would be like.  Appreciating the uniqueness in the world helps us see how special our planet is and everything it holds. 

In this project, we decorated a poster board with no directions (always fun!).  Then we began wondering how this decorated poster board is like the earth.  We will add to this special wonder board in the days to come but here are some of our responses:

1.   The hearts are like being caring.

2.  It looks like the rainbow here on earth.

3.  People are doing things.

4.  There are different colors.

Making these connections are an integral part of our learning!

Another connection we made is how we are growing just like other things on the earth.  We really enjoyed looking at our baby pictures and seeing how big we are now.  One child asked, “How did that even happen?”  So cute, such wonder!

We want to send a BIG thank you out to all our caring Explorers for helping us feel so appreciated for the Chinese Teacher Appreciation Day.  They learned all about this special holiday in Mandarin class and created beautiful flowers for each teacher in the school.  Thank you!

Reminders:

1-Grandparents Day celebration on Monday (2:00-3:00).

2-No school for kindergarten on Friday.

Ni Hao!

*Thanks for your help in creating this masterpiece on the first day!!

Caring

I am Caring.

I am Caring.

I am kind.

I am kind.

I’m a bucket filler.

I’m a bucket filler.

See me shine.

See me shine.

Our caring Explorers are sure expressing this Learner Profile at every possible opportunity.  Have they shared with you what it means to be a Bucket Filler?  This is something we talk a lot about as they use our giraffe language to communicate.  If you are interested in following up at home, below is the book we read in class that explains it all in great detail.

Our Unit of Inquiry, Who We Are, had us focusing on what is the same about everone and what make us unique.  We explored this in great detail.  We even explored how we were like M&M’s!  *We are all different on the outside, but on the inside we are just the same.  Those light bulb moments are so much fun to watch in our eager learners.

Thank you for taking the time to complete the special homework assignment with your child.  As they explored how children around the word go to school, it was great for them to learn how their families went to school too.  Making these special connections is an important part of their learning.

We are working on our numbers too and took a walk around the school on a quest to find numbers in our environment.  Wow, they sure are in a lot of places!  People use numbers in lots of different ways.  As you go around your home or community please help you child look for numbers too and exporer how they are being used.  Your children are wonderful observers!

Here we are with a partner ordering numbers from 1-10 with tiles.  It was so much fun to see their interactions and discussions.   

The children are having a lot of fun using our interactive board to reinforce the skills we are learning.  Here they are putting children on the school bus that matches the number and number word.

Mandarin has been a lot of fun and so interesting.  Our Explorers are learning how to communicate and a lot about the culture and customs of China.  We know how to say hello, good-bye, how to greet a teacher, how she will greet us and how to raise our hand (China has a special way).   

Hanging on our first floor is a masterpiece that every student at Campus International helped to create with Ms. Lipka.

A stunning use of broken crayons!

We hope you have a fantastic Labor Day weekend!  We look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday.