Ms McClellan – 2023/24

I can’t believe we’re off on a trip so early in the year but this promises to be a fun and enriching experience for the students. 

We will go to the Ulsan Early Childhood Development Centre where we will get to experience, through play, different jobs we can do when we grow up including some of the industry we have here in Ulsan. 

Our trip will be on Wednesday, September 27th. We will depart school at 9:15am and arrive back at 2:40. 

Please pack water, snack, and lunch as normal. For those students who receive lunch delivery, please be aware you must pack lunch on this day as the delivery will reach us at the centre. There will be a microwave available for our use. 

Kindly ensure that your children are wearing socks as this indoor environment is shoes-off. 

There is no cost for this trip.

Please submit this form by Monday, September 25th.

Here is the link: https://forms.gle/RoNHJb4epUwS5oyM7

Hello parents,

This is just a gentle reminder that things like snacks, candy, stickers, toys, cards (like Pokemon, etc) should not be brought to school unless it is a special occasion.

The sharing of little items like snacks and candy is not permitted at snack time. Stickers and cards should also not be brought. Sharing these items causes small fights to erupt and a lot of hurt feelings.

If you wish to send something to share with the class (i.e. a birthday goodie bag or treats on a special occasion), please let Ms. M know in advance.

Thank you so much for your cooperation. I appreciate all your effort in making our class and school an equitable and kind learning environment.

Wow, this week was a lot of fun. We miss the Moonbeams but we are preparing to go visit them on their planet next week!

Speaking of planets, we did a lot of exploring planets and planet art this week. We began by exploring space using AR on our tablets to view different planets, sattelites, etc.

We made 3D planets from clay which we will make a mobile with. Then we used different textured paint (some had rice, sand, and flour mixed in) to create our own planets. We also used collage materials to make planets. This 2D exploration led us to create a map to Planet Moonbeam which is now on display in the corridor. 

In PE we continued our astronaut training by flying to different coloured planets and also using a shapes and colours control panel on the wall to operate our space shuttle. Then we used scooters as spaceships to roll around the Hall as if we were flying from planet to planet! We’re nearly ready to take off for Planet Moonbeam!

All this work has made us very hungry so today we made Planet Pizzas. It was great fun and definitely delicious. 

We began phonics rotations this week. It’s great to see everyone working so hard on their letter sounds and reading. Some of us put good work into practising our names during rotations. I’m so pleased at everyone’s willingness to put in hard work!

We also had lots of fun exploring space in our unstructured play time and a great time singing and dancing with Mr. Green in Music!

Homework

Your quest this week is to plan a menu to bring on a space adventure. You don’t have to make the food but tell me what you would bring with you to space? Would you bring chocolate pudding like we ate last week in our astronaut training? Pizza like we made this week? What would be the best thing to eat in space? 

You can make a menu like a restaurant menu. If possible, you can write some of the food words. If you can’t write the word, maybe you can just write the first letter and draw a picture! You can bring your menu in as a hard-copy or email me photos at mariemcclellan@hyundaiforeignschool.com

Additionally, Mr. Green sent home a Creativity Butterfly. It is in your child’s bookbag with instructions. 

That’s all for this week! Have a great weekend and we’ll see you refreshed on Monday!

I think the children really liked the pudding we made and ate because more than one of them asked me to send the recipe to their parents. So, here you go:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/44699/chocolate-cornstarch-pudding/

This has been my tried and true pudding recipe since about 2013! I hope you enjoy it at home.

Speaking of having a delicious time in class, we will be making “planet pizzas” on Friday. I polled the students regarding the toppings they would like and it was a unanimous “cheese” so all that is going on these pizzas is crust, tomato sauce, and cheese. If there are any dietary restrictions preventing your child from participating please let me know ASAP so we can make alternate arrangements.

We will have these pizzas for lunch on Friday so you may wish to pack a lighter lunch as they will probably be full from pizza.

Have a great week! It’s getting exciting here!

Well here we are, back in the thick of things. It’s been such a wonderful week with everyone participating in our classroom activities and learning a lot through play. Before I forget, let me thank everyone for coming to Meet the Teacher on Tuesday. 

As promised you can find a little bit more information on our planned trip for September 27th at this link (it’s in Korean). The place is called the Early Childhood Development Center and it’s a great, hands-on learning environment for all kinds of technology, industry, and different jobs. There is no cost for this trip. It is a whole-day trip so please pack snack, lunch, and water. There is a microwave we can use at lunch to heat the food on this trip which is a nice touch! A permission slip will be forthcoming. 

Another important date I forgot to mention at our meeting, on Monday September 25th we will be visiting our Happy Boat friends at their kindergarten.

Now on with the update!

The Moonbeams went back to their planet this week. We had to repair their spaceship by way of a series of stations in the Hall where we explored number puzzles, pattern reproduction, weighing different items of play food, and making rocket fuel out of coloured water where we began to learn capacity. Our rocket fuel was made by mixing different, measured proportions of coloured water and being poured into a large bucket. 

Later, we went out to the pitch with the Moonbeams, their rockets, and some secret fuel provided by Ms. M. We put the Moonbeams in the rocket and sent them off into space using that fuel – it was bubbles!

The Moonbeams let us know that we were welcome to visit them any time so we began creating our astronaut costumes. We made helmets from papier mache. And we made suits with buttons of 2D shapes. These took a few days to make between drying, painting, and drying again. 

In the meantime we prepared our astronaut food (chocolate pudding). We used measures again with everyone getting a chance to weigh out the ingredients before Ms. M cooked the pudding.

With everything prepared, we set off on our astronaut training today. We put on our costumes and “floated” through the corridor and in the Hall, imagining we were on a Space Walk. When we got back to the classroom we ate our astronaut food like they do on the space station: out of a bag with a straw!

What an exciting experience.

We also did our phonics and maths testing this week and I’m happy to report that we are ready to start phonics and maths rotations next week. It’ll take us some time to get into our routines but we’re on the right track!

Homework

As part of our send-off to the Moonbeams, we made “About Me” pages so the Moonbeams could remember us. It would be great if we could practise greeting the Moonbeams in our home languages! 

So, kindly send Ms. M how to say “hello” or another greeting in your home language and practice it with your child so they can let us know how to say it next week during sharing time.

Some phrases you could use could be:

• Hello, nice to meet you.  
• Hello, my name is ____
• Hello, it’s good to see you again.
• Hello, how are you
  
  If you could send the phrase in your language and also in English to mariemcclellan@hyundaiforeignschool.com I would also appreciate it if your child is going to need some help sounding out the phrase during our sharing time, if you could send a phonetic guide for me to refer to to help them. (For example in a language I speak: Bonjour, je m’appelle Marie could be written bon-joor juh ma-pell Marie).
  
  That’s it for this week! Have a great weekend and we’ll see you on Monday!

Hello parents!

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week we have particularly messy activities planned. Please send your children in appropriate clothes that you do not mind getting dirty/stained.

I will remind them of this in circle time as well so they are not surprised.

Thanks for helping facilitate some great, active learning. And I can’t wait to see you all tomorrow at 2:30!

Wow! Our week started off with a bang – literally! We found that a spaceship had crashed into the Hall leaving debris all over the corridor. We grabbed our magnifying glasses and left the classroom to investigate. 

A little while later we found our classroom was a mess and there were aliens hiding all over the place! We learned they were the Moonbeam Family and they were trying to visit Earth on vacation but crashed into our school. We put up a nice tent they could live in (and we could play in). In exchange, they’ve been teaching us all about space in our Blast Off! IEYC unit. Some of us found these strange visitors very scary so Ms. M let us know we’re playing pretend because that’s the best way to learn when you’re a kid!

We weren’t the only ones scared, however. Our new friends were nervous in the school so we made them a photographic map of the school!

We learned all about the aliens and their friends while talking about different physical characteristics. We are different from the aliens because we only have 2 eyes, 2 arms, etc. but that sure does make us similar to each other! We practised describing physical features with a memory game!

But our friends are starting to get homesick. Today they taught us all about the stars since the Moonbeam aliens live far away from here in the stars. 

When we weren’t hanging out with the Moonbeams we had lots of great activities like PE. We will be doing Phonics and Maths assessments next week so we can dive into our rotations as soon as possible. 

Homework

Since we’ve been visited by Moonbeams from outer space, it would be great if you could go observe the night sky! Dong-gu has an observatory and some English information about it can be found here. What did you see? You can use this link to check what might be visible in the sky in Ulsan on any given night. 
If you take any pictures, do send them to me at mariemcclellan@hyundaiforeignschoo.com for our sharing time next Friday morning. And as always, if you do something great with your family that isn’t the assigned homework, do please send photos of that!

That’s all for this week. Have a good weekend! Stay dry! And we’ll see you Monday!

Hello parents,

As we have a small class and not many people can make it to today’s meeting, we will POSTPONE our Meet the Teacher to a more convenient time for everyone.

I will send an email soon with options for when we can meet that will hopefully suit everyone’s schedule and I’ll do my best to accomodate the whole class.

Thank you for your understanding.

Hello Parents,

Morning are not my forte! This is the last correction.

This Thursday, August 31 at 2:30 pm we will have a meet the teacher in my classroom.

Hope to see you there!

Hello Parents,

I mistyped in Friday’s update regarding the Meet the Teacher afternoon.

It will be this week. Thursday September 31, 2023 at 2:30pm in my Classroom.

Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome back! It’s so wonderful to see all your childrens’ smiling faces. We’ve had lovely introduction back to school and all our routines.

Thank you so much to everyone for remembring: snack boxes, lunch boxes, water bottles, and the ever-important change of clothes!

A few reminders about class routines that involve you at home:

• PE is on Tuesday. Please make sure your child is wearing clothes appropriate to play games and activities in. This includes sneakers or other appropriate sports shoes. We do not have time to change clothes for PE, however there is time to change shoes if your child wishes to wear fancier shoes to school that day. Please make sure to send sneakers or sports shoes if this is the case.
• Library is on Friday. Your child will bring home a book or two which you can read together at home. Don’t forget: reading to your child is as imporant a part of literacy development as independent reading. Library books will begin going home this week and should always be returned the following Friday.
• Homework will be assigned on Fridays. Homework usually takes the form of a home-learning link where I ask you and your child to do an activity together which relates to our theme in IEYC. I may also send a worksheet related to our phonics or maths activities that we’re working on. The following Friday we have a Homework Sharing Time where I make a slideshow of any photos you or your child took of your activity and give them the opportunity to share their home learning with the class. If you did an activity with your child that was not the assigned activity but your child would like to share it in Sharing Time, please do send the photos. All home learning is good learning. Please send any photos or videos to mariemcclellan@hyundaiforeignschool.com There is no homework this week.

I am aware that we all know each other at this stage, however there is a Meet the Teacher afternoon on Thursday October 31 at 2:30pm in my classroom. I would love to see you there and we can talk about what’s on tap for this year. I’d love to hear how we can collaborate in your child’s learning. I look forward to seeing you!

Have a great weekend and let’s get ready for Week 1 on Monday!

Hello and welcome back to a brand new year here at HFS and in Ms. M’s class. Let me take a moment to introduce myself and give you a brief overview of what to expect this year.

In 2006 I said, “I’ll come teach English in Korea for a year. I can do anything for a year!” Little did I know I would fall in love with working with children, shaping young minds and hearts, and watching the future grow and blossom before my eyes. After 5 years, I returned to Canada to get my B.Ed and make teaching my career. I taught in Indonesia and China before returning to Korea in 2018 to work at HFS.

My teaching philosophy can simply be summed up by saying “Those who can, do.” and I believe it is my job as a teacher to remove barriers and motivate children so that they can learn. In FS 1/2 learning looks a lot like playing and that’s exactly how it should be. What you can expect in my class are rich educational possibilities that are FUN!

In my spare time I love to cook, do yoga, knit and do other crafts, colour, and travel. This summer I had a whirlwind trip to Canada and the US visiting friends and family. No sooner was that finished than did my husband and I jet off to Vietnam for some R&R. My heart is full from meaningful connections made over the summer and my mind is relaxed and ready to create wonderful experiences with your children this year!

I hope you refreshed and ready to go on Thursday and for old and new friends alike: You Are Welcome Here.

I can always be contacted at mariemcclellan@hyundaiforeignschool.com with any questions, concerns, or just for a chat. If face-to-face communication is more your style, don’t hesitate to make an appointment to come see me