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Well on Monday we finally tracked down the ice queen!! That Mighty Freeze who was setting us so many challenges this term was really Ms Yuli! And she’s not a villian! She’s a hero who was training us. But don’t tell anyone, it’s her secret identity!

Then on Tuesday we got a message from a Famous Robot Scientist! He left us clues all around the school to try to find his robot he created for us. He’s been sending us messages and new robots all week. He sent us a shape robot but forgot to put in the hole for the octogon so Ms. M had to fix that up! We also looked at our own robot type toys and put new buttons on our robot we found on Tuesday. That robot scientist is pretty forgetful!

In Literacy we finished up our book Naughty Bus by doing an excellent recall/retell set of activities. But before that we made sentences and used our phonics knowledge to help us read lots of words and write lots of our retell.

Speaking of Phonics, our Red Words this week are “I” and “me”. We did a lot of practice reading words and still read one of our Ditty pages.

In Maths we started looking at the numbers 6, 7, 8. We studied how to represent them and also how to add one more to numbers up to 8!

We really had a fun-filled week. On top of all this focussed learning, we learned a lot through play and conversation.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week!

What an exciting week it’s been!

We’re learning to read! We’re still practicing our letters but we’re on to reading short passages and learning “Red Words!” Red words are otherwise known as “sight words” and they are words that cannot be sounded out with our phonics knowledge. As we say, “You can’t Fred a Red” (Fred is a frog who can only segment words. He can’t put them together. That’s our job).

In Maths we learned about mass and capacity. We did experiments although the weather hasn’t cooperated for our water experiments. Hopefully we’ll get to do those soon. We’re moving onto our next Maths unit regardless looking at numbers above 5.

In Literacy that Naughty Bus is at it again! He drove on the table and spilled the tea all over the floor. Mom was pretty unhappy. She even visited us in class. Together we wrote a letter from Naughty Bus and it’s driver, Jack, to Mom appologizing for our behaviour.

And not to bury the lede but we are *this close* to finding out who The Mighty Freeze could be! This week we did our superhero training, unfroze our stuffed toys and rescued Mr. Mole. But that wasn’t the last we’d heard of The Mighty Freeze. She kidnapped various toys from our classroom and froze them in ice! We had to figure out how to freeze them. A quick knock with a small hammer and a dip into hot water did the trick! Today we found The Mighty Freeze’s lair and we experimented with forces (pushing toy cars, and rolling cars down a ramp) to see if we could get into her lair.

I’ve heard on Monday we’re going to finally catch that sneaky Mighty Freeze!

We’ve got a lot in store next week so rest up over the weekend. That’s all for this week!

It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Maddie this week and a cheerful welcome back to Yeseo. What a change in our class dynamic this will be.

We continued on our To the Rescue unit this week in IEYC with The Mighty Freeze stealing our Rama and Sita story and posting it all out of order around the school for us to find and put back in order.

Phonics saw more letter sounds and sounding out words as well as letter formation.

We wrote some of our first words using stamps in Literacy as we talked about who would be waiting for the Naughty Bus. I wonder what happens next.

In Maths we continued looking at the number 5 especially in terms of One More and One Less.

And that’s about it for this week. Just a short update before the holiday. Have a great holiday to those coming back and safe travels to those leaving us for good. You will be missed.

Well here we are, a tiny class of 1 this week, learning lots, playing lots, and getting to know each other very well.

There are germs going around the school and Ms M is wearing a mask for her own illness while helping friends blow their noses, and we’re all making sure to wash our hands a lot. Please keep an eye on your kids and if they’re sick, keep them home.

We started our new IEYC unit “To the Rescue” this week. We were visited by The Mighty Freeze who stole our present from The Superhero but we were able to find it. We’ve started reading some superhero stories like Supertato and Super Daisy and the Peril of Planet Pea. Since these are vegetable-based superhero stories, your homework this week is to try a new vegetable!

Don’t forget, you can see what we’re up to this term by checking our Termly Curriculum Plan.

You can also see what we’re up to all year and understand how all our learning fits together by reading our Curriculum Overview (also found as a permanent link at the top of the page).

In Maths, we’ve started our new unit Alive in 5 where we’ve begun by focussing on the number zero. We’ve done several activities, including being Monkeys Jumping on a Bed and bumping our heads until there was none of us left to get a grasp of counting down to zero.

In Phonics we’re continuing to solidify our letter sound knowledge and begining to read simple CVC words. We’re also practicing our formation of letters as we learn their sounds. This week we learned d, t, and i.

That’s all for this week! We hope to see everyone on Monday!

Well here we are back in class! We’re smaller than usual as we wait for everyone to get back from vacation but that doesn’t mean the learning isn’t happening.

In Phonics we’re having 1:1 lessons reviewing our Set 1 letter sounds (this week was M, A, S) and practicing our hand writing.

In Maths we’re learning about 4-sided shapes. We looked at how we can put squares and rectangles together to make bigger squares or rectangles. We also looked for those 4-sided shapes in a photo walk around school!

In Literacy we began our new book The Naughty Bus. We found a present (it was a London double decker bus!) and wrote an account of trips we may have taken on busses. I know this is less common in our school to take the bus around town but if you get the opportunity to ride the bus with your child, please do so. It’s a great formative experience and will really help cement the learning in this unit.

That’s it for this week. However, here are some highlights of the last 2 weeks of last term which didn’t get their own update.

Wow! Did we ever have an exciting week!

We learned about Diwali in Literacy (a little late for the holiday, however) and we made diya lamps and used coloured rice to make rangoli patterns. We learned about the story of Rama and Sita which the children absolutely loved! It’s fun watching children resonate with tales from other cultures.

Speaking of Rama and Sita, we spent some time later in the week in IEYC digging in the dirt and found coins. As archeologists, we concluded they must have been left as a trail from Sita when she was kidnapped so Rama could find her. That cross curricular link was made entirely by the students! We also learned about the amazing scale of dinosaurs. We measured ourselves against a life-size triceratops footprint. When we painted the footprint with our hands we had another cross curricular link and thought about the holiday of Holi where they throw powedered paint in a festival!

In Math we finished up circles and triangles as well as positional language and we began learning the numbers 4 and 5.

In Phonics we learned more letter sounds including the digraph TH. That one is a little tricky!

That’s all for this week!

Wow, the term came back from break with a bang and swept us all off our feet! Here’s what we’ve been up to!

We began our new IEYC unit Dinosaur Detectives by finding dinosaur eggs all around the classroom and we’ve been deep in dinoland ever since. We’ve got vines hanging from the doorframe, leaves on the windows, and an immense amound of dinosaur books on our bookshelves! We’ve read about the Dinosaur Who Lost His Roar and another book about dinosaurs in school where even the head teacher had turned into a dinosaur! We’ve studied opposites via dinosaurs and we’re gearing up to learn just how big dinosaurs were! (That comes on Monday).

We’ve got some dinosaur-related homework. Did you know there’s a Dinosaur Footprint Park here in Ulsan! Your homework is to try to visit it if the weather is cooperative! Here are some links to help you find it:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g297893-d17754070-Reviews-Dinosaur_Footprint_Park-Ulsan.html

[NAVER Map]
Dinosaur Footprint Park
Jung-gu Ulsan 259-2 Yugok-dong
https://naver.me/5FZwLro4

[KakaoMap] Gongnyongbaljaguk Park

54-3, Yugok-dong, Jung-gu, Ulsan

https://kko.kakao.com/LOJn8YK4Zc

In Math we finished up our study of 1, 2, and 3 and began an in-depth look at circles and triangles. The students had a great time making art with those shapes and going on a shape hunt around the school with cameras.

In Phonics we’ve really started working on CVC words as well as still working on letter sounds and we’re nearing the end of all the Set 1 Speed Sounds and I couldn’t be prouder of our class for all the hard work they’re putting into learning how to read.

In Literacy we’re still studying about celebrations. We revisted Bonfire Night because who can resist a marshmallow. We’ve also started studying the chapter “SPLAT!” all about festivals in the spring where people throw things, like La Tomatina in Spain – they throw tomatoes! We found tomatoes all over our class with letters on them and used them to make words. To this end, please wear old clothes on Monday as we’re going to get messy with paint (not throwing it).

We’ve passed the 50-day mark in our daily count of school days. That means we’re half-way to 100-day! And the party that will happen then!

We had a great time on our field trip with Mrs. Sim’s class. We climbed. We made new friends. We met old friends. It was a lovely day.

Speaking of old friends, our friends at Happy Boat visited us on Monday. They did our morning calendar routine with us, we made robots, and then we played outside together. It was a great exchange. In December, we’ll be going to see them at their school.

What a great two weeks it has been. So sorry I missed last week’s update. We had lots of great learning both last week and this week.

Monday of Week 8 we went to visit our friends at Happy Boat! We had a fun time playing a game flipping over fall leaves and then enjoying ourselves on their indoor play structure.

In Week 8 we finished up our Gingerbread Man unit doing our best to retell the story, sequence story pictures and write labels on those pictures.

This week we began our new unit on Festivals! We started by looking at the British festival of Bonfire Night so we played pretend that we had a big bonfire and pretended to roast marshmallows. Then we looked at our book, aptly titled Festivals! and started to take note at different features of a non-fiction book such as a table of contents.

Our IEYC unit wrapped up this week with an exploration of body movement wherein we got extremely messy painting with our hands and feet! That was slippy and slidy!

In Phonics we continued to learn to read one letter at a time and something exciting happened: Maddison read her first two words! I am so proud of her progress. We also did phonics level testing and the children are performing right on target.

In Math we focussed on 1:1 correspondence in counting and spent a lot of time on that.

That’s it for this week and we hope to see everyone back safe and sound next week for the last week before midterm break. I’m excited for the Halloween party on Friday. What will you be?

It was a short week but one filled with great learning.

Just a note: we will be going to visit our sister kindergarten Happy Boat on Monday morning. There is nothing special that needs to be prepared for that.

We started to implement our feelings board and various calm strategies like our calm bottles. The children requested that we make one to go home as, and I quote, “I feel mad at home too, Ms. M”.

To use the calm bottle, when your child is feeling a big feeling they may need to center and ground themselves they can shake the bottle as vigorously as their feeling is strong. Then they can watch the sequins and sparkles calm down in the water. This meditative act should help them to calm their feelings.

We’re approaching the end of our Gingerbread Man literacy unit and we’ve begun making sure we can reach our objectives. The one we worked on this week was labelling a drawing. We recieved a letter from Mr. and Mrs. Baker who made the gingerbread man that they would like to debut a new cake in their shop. Our job was to design and label it. I’m pleased with the job the children did.

In Maths we’re looking at the numbers 1, 2, and 3. This may seem very simple but having a firm understanding of these numbers will create a strong foundation for the maths we do as the year progresses.

That’s it for this week. We’ll see you on a very rainy Monday!

What an incredible week we had!

We started the week off with a vist from Ms Nila! She’s a dentist (and also Naka and Ayaka’s mom). She showed us how to take care of our teeth. We might have been shy around her at first but we came around and had a great time!

We explored patterns in Maths and that doesn’t just mean visual patterns either. We made patterns we actions and patterns with sound. Our Maths assessment was on Thursday to see how everyone was coming along and I’m pleased with the progress this class is making.

We imagined what it would be like if we were the Gingerbread Man being chased around by the cow. “Run run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me. I’m the Gingerbread Man.” Ms. M as the cow could not catch any of the gingerbread students. We also imagined and painted other animals that might chase the Gingerbread Man. That was our messy painting outside on the school windows! I think it adds some ambiance to our outdoor and indoor space! We also practiced labelling either with initial letter or word our paintings. That’s one of our goals in literacy – to label a drawing. We continued using our imaginations and thought, “What if the Gingerbread man had a bridge? Then he wouldn’t be eaten by that sneaky fox!” So we built bridges out of different blocks for our Ginger-selves.

In IEYC we started again talking about feelings. Many of our units cover feelings and the wellbeing and care of ourselves and our friends when we’re not feeling at our best.

A feeling we sure felt on Friday was sadness as it was Brendan’s last day. We made him a card and had some sweets and a little party with Mrs Sim’s class. We’ll miss you so much!!

That’s all for this update! Enjoy the short, weird week for Week 7!