Good afternoon,
This week was especially exciting as the children enjoyed their very first swimming lesson at ABIS! We are beginning to establish routines to make this new experience smooth, enjoyable, and full of learning. Here’s how it works: the children collect their own swimming bag and then together we walk as a class to the swimming pool, where the boys and girls go to their separate changing rooms to leave their bags and outer clothing. With support, they put on swim caps, goggles, and flip-flops, collect their towels, and head out to the pool. Once the coaches and Ms Nuria give the instruction, the children sit at the pool’s edge before carefully getting in. The pool is shallow enough for them to stand, and throughout the year they will take part in a range of fun, progressive activities that build the foundations of swimming. After the session, the children return to their changing rooms to dry off and get dressed before we walk back to the classroom. Adults are always nearby to give a helping hand where needed, but we also increasingly like to encourage independence in dressing and undressing. We ask you to support this at home as an important way to help your child build confidence and self-reliance.
This week in class we began talking about emotions—recognising them and learning to name them. We focused especially on happy, sad, angry, calm and scared. We read the story The Color Monster and had fun using our bodies and faces to show the different feelings in the book. From now on, each morning when the children put up their photographs as part of self-registration, they will also choose how they are feeling by placing a stick with their picture into a matching “Color Monster” pot. You can support this learning at home by talking about how characters in stories are feeling, and by noticing and naming your child’s emotions during important moments in the day. You can find a read aloud version of The Color Monster here on YouTube.
The children also drew their first self-portrait of the school year. They loved looking at their reflections in the mirror, noticing their features, making different expressions, and then drawing what they saw. As the children continue to create a new self-portrait each month, we are likely to be able to see an interesting progression in their drawing ability, motor skills, and observational skills by the end of the year.
A reminder that there is no school on Sunday. We wish you a good long weekend, and look forward to seeing the children at school on Monday,
The KG1 Team
