Dear families of KG1 students,
We hope you have had a good week and that the children enjoyed the long weekend last week. As coughs and colds appear to still be around at the moment, we continue to ask you to please support us in teaching the children to cover their noses and mouths when they cough or sneeze. We have been showing them how to ‘catch’ their sneezes and coughs in their sleeve (the crook of their elbow). Many thanks for your help with this.
We have a growing class of readers in KG1! Increasingly we are seeing children show an interest in reading to themselves, with friends or with a teacher. We are excited about this growing passion for books and very much encourage the children to see themselves as readers. Research consistently shows that the most important thing families can do to help their children at school is to read together with them. Sharing a book with your child(ren) is not only helpful to their growing literacy skills, but is also a special way to spend time together. At this stage, we are happy to see emerging pre-reading skills such as children holding the book the correct way round, turning pages in the right direction, using pictures to tell the story, predicting what might happen next, asking questions about the narrative and sometimes recognising familiar letters such as those found in their own names. We encourage you to also celebrate this important stage of reading development. We hope you enjoy the pictures of children enjoying reading in class.
This week, one of our maths sessions involved creating “human graphs.” We asked the children to show whether they liked or disliked a specific food by moving to a symbol -an ‘X’ for “No, I don’t like it” and a check mark for “Yes, I like it.” This visual activity made graphing fun and helped the children learn about data handling. Afterward, they practised tallying by asking friends and teachers which ice cream flavour, fruit, or type of cupcake they preferred, making one mark for each response.
For our unit of inquiry, we explored the question, “What words can we use with friends to play happily?” We started by watching a simple social story that highlighted some helpful language we can use with friends. Afterward, the children worked in pairs to come up with phrases that matched pictures of children doing different activities with friends. For example, in a picture where one child is helping another up after a fall, we asked the children to think about what each child might be saying. You can see their ideas on your child’s Seesaw profile.
Finally, next Thursday there will be a lower school assembly in the Mazoon from 12:20pm. KG1 will not be taking an active part in presenting at this early stage in the year, but you are most welcome to join us as an audience for KG2 to Grade 2 classes.
We wish you all a lovely weekend. Kind regards,
Kristina, Rahma and Buthaina
