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. 

Happy New Year!

It was great opening the doors to the classroom this week, after a three week break and even more exciting to see the students back in their learning environment! 

Preschool was excited to welcome Murmeli back as well who had the opportunity to visit another new country. She spent her holidays in the United States with Miss Moss. 

Language

Ready for the challenging year ahead, Preschool started the week by looking ahead and discussing the New Year. They recognised that a year is a long time, agreed that it is a new start and as with any new start it is important to have goals. Having that in mind, Preschool concentrated on what they would like to achieve in the coming year and wrote New Year's Resolutions. 

Preschool's New Year's Resolutions for 2016

Maths 

In maths Preschool picked up where they left off in December, continuing with the unit on mass, capacity and length. This week the focus was on capacity and mass. They explored these concepts by using their surroundings. They sorted and ordered various items, making predictions on which items are able to hold more water. Like the true inquirers they are, they checked their work and tested their predictions. Preschool really enjoyed investigating what happened to the amount of water when objects were placed inside! They recorded their information and were able to explain it to Miss Michelotti perfectly! Well done! 

1) Exploring Capacity 

2) What is heavier? 

Unit of Inquiry 

This week we continued to explore our Unit on Celebrations and did so by inquiring about why we celebrate Christmas. Preschool had many ideas and after watching  a short movie explaining the background of Christmas, Preschool definitely became much more knowledgeable regarding the celebration. They came up with questions, observations and conclusions: 

• Why do we have Christmas trees? 
• Why does Santa come? 
• Christmas is Jesus' birthday
• When it's Santa's birthday, we give him presents. 
• For Santa's birthday we could have a party. 
• You can build a Christmas tree.
• Why does Santa sometimes bring the wrong presents? 
• We spend time with our family. 
• Christmas is on the 24th-25th of December. 
• We make Gingerbread Houses. 
• Santa Claus arrives.
• There are presents under the tree. 
• Why does Santa have to travel all over the world?
• We have Advent Calendars.
• We buy candies and eat cake.

Preschool will be looking at Chinese New Year next week therefore, they had the opportunity to make their own lanterns however, they are under strict instructions not to tell anyone that they are meant to be Chinese New Year lanterns as they are orange and not red (the school ran all out of red paper during the Christmas season and more is being ordered as we speak)! The classroom is already looking very festive. 

Reminders

• Preschoool will be receiving homework again, starting on Monday. 

• Show&Tell for Monday is free choice. 

• Please remember to send in your child's library books on Monday and please send in their folders.

• Please remember containers for cooking on Wednesday. 

• We will be starting our Celebration Guest Presentations next week, I will be emailing those interested about times, later today and would love to invite more volunteers to take part. 

• I will no longer be accompanying Grade One to swimming and will therefore teach Show&Tell and Library on Mondays. 

I wish you all a great weekend. 

Sabina Michelotti

Quick Update

Dear Parents,

A great end to an amazing term! 

First of all Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful break and started 2016 well.

I am looking forward to welcoming your child back to the classroom, for what I am certain will be a great start full of new adventures and experiences.

Here are few things for you to note:

• As the students miss Show&Tell on Monday, I will dedicate one of the lessons on Tuesday to do so. If you could please support this by sending something in for them to share with the class. 

• Before the holidays, in my post I asked for volunteers to come and talk to the class about a celebration of their choice, in order to support the new Unit of Inquiry. This can be done in any way you feel comfortable with (e.g. through a storybook, powerpoint, poster, craft activity, baking etc..). I'd really appreciate your help. Here are some pointers to include:
• why do we celebrate it
• where is it celebrates
• traditional foods/costumes/dances

If you are interested please send me an email with a date/day preferences. Again it would be great to have you involved!

As for now enjoy the long weekend and I look forward to seeing you next week. 

Best regards, 

Sabina Michelotti