Junior Preschool friends went a walk and picked up a nice branch. Children think that there are something missing on the branch. They said there are no leaves and flowers. It can be look nicer with flowers and leaves on it. Tissue paper blossoms taped to real branches look like the real thing. Children love crunching and scrunching up with tissue paper. It feels great, sounds wonderful. When our spring tree was covered with colorful tissue paper blossoms, we name it on our branch as Popcorn Tree! Isn’t our centerpiece pretty?
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This week, we read a book called “Are you my mother? by P.D Eastman” and the children enjoyed this story very much. We then invited them to act out, based on the story. Moreover, they decided which characters they wanted to be and how to act it out. The children also used a variety of materials to make their characters’ costume or masks. The children participated positively in pretend play with ideas materials and their friends. Throughout this acting-out exploration, the children gained knowledge in engaging representational and creative experiences by using materials for creative purpose, as well as, they developed language skills and worked as a team. We had a busy, but fun week. Messy Day-Messy play gives children the opportunity to experience a wide range of sensory experiences. Prepared solutions such as fingerpaint, slime and gloop give children a wonderful opportunity to experiment with different textures and materials. This Friday, we prepared flour, sweet potato power and food coloring for the children to explore. It was very messy, but the children had a great time. Exploring/reviewing how to write "d" Observational Drawing:
After looking at some paintings of different artists, we discussed about how artists choose what they want to paint and why. Children said "sometimes artists use their imagination and sometimes they make pictures of what they see." This week, we tried to do observational drawings. The children chose an art medium; coloring pencils, makers or paints and what they want to draw. Some children decided to draw or paint different parts of our playground. Over the past week,the children noticed that some of the dinosaurs are carnivorous and some of them are vegetarian. “ Argentinosaurs eat leaves” “T-rax eat meat”. We then invited the children to go for a nature walk to find some leaves for the dinosaurs. “There are many leaves, why no meat?”, the children were curious as to why they could not find any meat in the garden. We brought some leaves and put them on the table in the dress up corner. The children started to cut the leaves and fed the dinosaurs. They children are also developing their problem solving skills and how to share a dinosaur toy with friends throughout the dinosaurs exploration. The children used a timer to tell their friends how long they needed to wait to have a turn to play with the toy. Most of the time, they will sit and look at the timer to finish and show it their friends. Throughout the exploration of dinosaurs, the children also displayed confidence and participated positively in mark-making experiences, using an increasingly wider range of tools to express ideas, thoughts and feeling. Moreover, as we are reading a book called "Let's go on a Picnic" and one page is about making smoothies for the picnic. Some of the children were curious about what this was, while some of them were saying "That's yummy drink". To help them to understand what a smoothie tastes like and how to make it, we then prepared some fruit, and yogurt to make smoothies on Friday. Thank you for sending all different kind of fruit. The children wanted to make the smoothies at the playground: " Go outside to make smoothie, because today is a beautiful day". The children worked together as team to set up the table and bring the fruit to the playground. They all loved the smoothie, of course, they wanted to do it again. ;) During the circle time, we read I Really Wonder What Plant I’m Growing Lauren Child. Another great book is The Tiny Seed,by Eric Carle. We discuss what experiences the children have had with growing things, including large plants such as trees, and smaller plants such as daisies or buttercups. We talk about the plants and flowers in the school playground, and in children’s gardens. We look at a diagram of a flower and discuss about how these parts have an important role in the growth of plants Roots – Gets water and food from the soil Stems – Carry water and food around the plant, feeding the leaves Leaves – Make food for the plant through photosynthesis Flowers – Produce seeds for new plants or fruit Seeds – Can be planted to grow a new plant Growing Seeds We fill each containers with soil, and dig a small hole in the middle. Each child pick a bean, and place it in the hole. We are going to water it twice a day. Then we are going to create ‘Plant’ journals, to document the growth of the seeds. We are going to have a little garden in our classroom, the children to choose which vegetables and plants to grow there. While they grow plants, they will observe how soil, water and sun help the seeds grow. This makes a great class project, and the children will love watching their garden grow! Observing and Sketching plants. In Junior Preschool class, children observe and draw plants and flower from baskets. We guide them to observe these objects by looking at them very, very closely and noticing everything they can see about them. We encourage them to notice the shapes, the relative size, the texture, and the small details of the object they are sketching. The repeated practice of this activity allows children to slow down, to take another look, to discover subtle details, and to construct knowledge through interaction with the world. When a child begins this practice, he or she builds an important capacity to learn through direct observation. It is a practice that leads in turn to comparing, contrasting, and classifying. And in this way, observation drawing helps to lay the foundation for scientific thinking. Can we build up a tree with train track? Junior preschool friends love to build up train tracks. We find out train tracks made by wooden piece. We are wondering what else we could do with tracks to learn about the natural world. Can we build up a tree with train tracks? Children look at the poster of plants and try to build up a part of tree by looking at the pictures. We bring tracks on two barrel cars the blue engine was pulling to the ends of the branches and adding them on. As we did so, we talked a little about the roots drew water and nutrients from the soil, up through the trunk to the leaves at the tips of the branches. The interesting thing was he didn’t play trains on it all that much. He was more interested in the track itself and running on it. The children enjoyed walking around the campus looking at different art works that were done by other students. We discussed what kind of materials were used?/ how do you think they were made?/ why do you think they were made?. We met some older students who were involved in making an artwork and had chanced to ask some questions related to their artwork. The children have been continuing to explore dinosaurs through different activities in the learning centres over the past two weeks. Last week, Ms. Jina and Miss Lee invited the children to make dinosaurs by using paper plates. They displayed confidence and independence to manipulate tools to make dinosaurs. Moreover, as the children enjoyed listening to a song called: “Dig it Up”, to use a brush to brush sand off of the dinosaurs, as this was a part of the song. Therefore, we put brushes and hid the dinosaurs under the sand for the children to brush the dinosaurs out of the sand, just like in the song. One of activities is called exploring wikki stix with dinosaurs, which the children enjoyed the most. The wikki stix allows children to be more creative and develop their fine motor skills. To improve the children’s fine motor skill is one of the more important developmental stages in young age, as fine motor skills become increasingly important when it comes time for your child to learn handwriting. Some of children made necklaces for their dinosaurs, while some of made crazy hair on the dinosaurs. Some of children might not be interested in making anything for the dinosaurs, but created other objects such as snakes, circles and ice cream. Most importantly, they all had a good time. As the weather is so beautiful today, we set up a painting area for the children to explore at the playground. They enjoyed painting on the glass, and mixing colors. You might see your child have a little something on their clothes, because they had too much fun painting at the playground. The children were so excited to visit big dinosaurs at the park. They were all amazed at how big the dinosaurs were; "Wow, the dinosaurs so big"." The T-Rax has big teeth", and "Are they gonna eat us?". To make a meaningful connection to their learning, we invited the children to use ribbon or yarn to measure the size of dinosaurs, which helps children to understand basic measurement attributes of visibility, and feeling, length and height Bubble Painting: Before we began, I had the children play around with blowing air at each other through the straws. We had bubbles going everywhere in our outdoor classroom and one of our bubble fun activities included bubble painting at the paper. Sometimes, blowing bubbles can be challenging and when we are trying to aim for the paper on our paper, it can even be more challenging. We had to think about where to blow, how hard to blow, and even how fast to blow so the bubbles would come out and land on our paper. The more time children took to blow bubbles, the more colorful their paper was.
Sensory Table: Every week our nature table looks different. Our nature table is to be used not just looked at. The specimens are to be held and to be explored. To be poked and prodded. To be touched and felt. To be held to the ear and listened to. To be used as a way for the child to connect with nature. Below Otis is exploring the shapes and designs the shells make in a sand tray. We hid the sea shells in the sand and let children find them. Paper Waving Practice: Weaving paper was one of our favorite crafts for this week. It was really fun to see ordinary paper transformed into a paper weaving masterpiece! Introduce this simple craft to children and enjoy the results. It is a great fine motor skills activity as well. The results of paper weaving are so pretty to look at and lots of fun can be had trying to come up with new weaving patterns to create new and interesting designs. |
Meet the EARLY YEARS teachersMS.CarolCarol Lesser has over 20 years of experience in early childhood and ESL education. She has taught in Taiwan and Canada and has also worked at international schools in Korea, Indonesia, Singapore and Mongolia. Carol earned a Diploma and a Bachelor of Education in Early Childhood Education from universities in Taiwan. Additionally, she earned a Montessori Graduate Diploma in Vancouver, Canada. Furthermore, she earned a Master of Education in Teaching Second Languages in Toowoomba, Australia. She also has certification in Reggio Emilia, PYP, ESL, and the University of Cambridge International Primary Program. In her free time, Carol enjoys dancing, cooking, organizing social events with her husband, Michael, and traveling. She has been at Busan International Foreign School since 2015. kATHY SONKathy Son has over 20 years of experience in education. She has worked at BIFS since the winter of 1995. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Child Development in California State University of Fullerton and has done a Teacher Credential Program in Concordia University, Irvine. In her free time Kathy enjoys going shopping and watching movies with her family. Archives
August 2017
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