Goodbyes are never easy...

This was the last week of another month spent in the Preschool classroom and this means that Preschool will be learning a new Poem to accompany February. In the meantime I would like to share with you the excellent job they did in mastering the January Poem.

It will be a different start to the week this Monday with one Preschool member less. However, we are all certain to meet up again very soon!

Unit of Inquiry

Preschool continued to get more and more knowledgeable regarding Celebrations, collecting a huge amount of information about festivals and celebrations from all over the world. During the course of the week, Preschool learnt:

• that celebrating birthdays is not limited to people, but that countries also celebrate their birthdays. They got to celebrate countries' birthdays with party poppers, blowing out candles and eating cake!

• all about Setsubun and scared Miss Michelotti with their colourful Oni masks! An exciting lesson was spent sharing their knowledge about Oni and learning new things about Setsubun. Preschool even tested their patience by trying out origami and were much more successful than their teacher in doing so. 

• about Fasnacht, where they had the chance to try making their own Fastenwähe (a Basler speciality), which turned out very well! They loved watching the Carnival Procession and decided that they will need to come visit Miss Michelotti in Basel to take part in Fasnacht.  

In art they made their own Carnival masks to go along with the new poem they will be learning this month!

The students are making connections between the different celebrations and that is extremely delightful to hear and see! Their knowledge is shining through and the classroom reflects their thoughts and learning journey. 

Preschool is know ready to apply their learning and this week they will be planning their summative assessments, where they need to create their own Celebration and present it to the class. I will post separately on this, as I will need your help and support for some of it. 

Maths

In maths Preschool was very excited as they got to go around to the different classrooms and ask students questions about celebrations. This information will be used and quantified this week as Preschoolers will continue looking at data handling. 

Language 

Language was quite tough but as usual, an open-minded attitude and fastening their thinking caps tightly, helped a huge deal. Preschool started building their own sentences, by focussing on what makes a sentence. They even wrote their own and will continue doing so this week. 

I apologise for the shorter and slightly late blogpost this week but I have been recovering from a cold, ready for another exciting action packed week! 

Have a goodnight! Best wishes, 

Sabina Michelotti

Go xi fa tsai, Making our own Hanetsuki, Easter and so much more....

Preschool really dove into their Unit of Inquiry on Celebrations this week, curious to inquire and find out more about celebrations.

Go xi fa tsai! 

Preschool was introduced to Chinese New Year this week, starting with a very fun game of Dragon Tag. Each pair was a dragon in charge of protecting their own tails and running away from the other dragons. However, each dragon pair was eager to become bigger and stronger and to do so had to steal tails from the other dragons!

Language

In Language, still looking at Chinese New Year,  they listened to a story about a small girl and her family to learn how Chinese New Year is typically celebrated. From there Preschool quickly started making their own educated conclusions and questions started pouring in:

• Why do you eat oranges for Chinese New Year? 
• Why do you get red envelopes?
• Why do oranges represent money? 
• Why is there special food? 
• Why do we cut our hair for Chinese New Year? 
• Why do you get money for Chinese New Year? 
• Why do you wear lion costumes? 
• You need to clean the house for Chinese New Year. 
• Dragon costumes are scary because you need to say bye to winter and hello to spring.
• You can play dragon tag. 

Maths 

Focussing on Chinese New Year, as their inspiration for maths, Preschool practised grouping and handling data, using tally marks to quantify their results. They realised that when using tally marks, you count to four and the fifth tally is diagonal to make reading results more easy. Preschool had a lot of fun counting and sorting Chinese New Year related objects. 

This new knowledge will be extremely important next week as Preschool is going to be asking the school community all about celebrations using their own survey and then quantifiying their results! 

Cooking 

Not only was Chinese New Year part of maths and language this week, it was also part of cooking. Preschool had a lot of fun during cooking class baking Monkey Cupcakes, to celebrate that 2016 is the year of the Monkey! They looked really tasty and the school smelled lovely again!

For those that are curious about the recipe: 

Art

From making Chinese New Year lanterns last week in Art, Preschool decorated their own Hanetsuki paddles. Miss Moss so kindly drew beautiful designs on the paddles and Preschool focused on creating beautiful intricate designs. 

Guests in the Preschool Classroom 

Preschool was really lucky this week and welcomed two guests to the classroom and had a lot of fun in doing so. Preschool revisited the old Unit on Community Helpers on Thursday morning as they welcomed a scientist and were able to use real lab equipment to make predictions and carry out their own experiments.

 On Friday, Preschool had a special talk about Easter. Preschool listened to the Easter Story, tasted pretzels and decorated their own eggs! It was a huge success and I am really excited for this week's Celebration Presentations! 

I apologise for only getting the post out today but hope you all had a wonderful weekend and enjoy your Sunday afternoon/evening.

Best regards,

Sabina Michelotti

Reminders for next week 

• We will be holding a small goodbye party for Luna on Friday, January 29th, period 7. I will bake something for the class, you are welcome to join us. 
• Show&Tell tomorrow, if you could send in something related to a celebration/holiday. 
• Library on Monday. 
• Please remember that Preschool has PE on Tuesdays and Thursdays and that you should send in PE clothes for them. 
• Cooking on Wednesday, please send in containers. 
• Thank you very much for all parents who are coming in to present. We really appreciate it.