Hello everyone, I hope that you are doing well and you had a great weekend. We have had a pretty eventful week, with a few interesting events keeping us busy.

This week, we began with our annual rice planting event. Some of the students had their first experience of getting stuck in the mud, getting a little dirty and planting some rice that we will definitely enjoy pretty soon. We also spent some time explaining the importance of rice in Japan and how to actually go about planting the rice. This was a great experience for us all.

Music class has been very fun and engaging for the students and myself, as we learned about listening and following rhythm through sounds and play. We played some games, and the students also practised using their pianicas (melodica) which was pretty good.

For the past few weeks, grade 1 have been practising dodgebee and playing some dodgebee games for P.E, but this time we started a new game for P.E. It was quite warm, however it was still very fun to do something me as we learn new and interesting games.

Some students tend to forget to drink water during the day, especially during recess break when they are focused on playing and having fun. This is something that happens throughout ISN, and not just exclusive to grade 1. As the temperatures rise and the weather gets hot, it is important for us to regularly hydrate. Today, after our P.E class, we all sat down in class and had a few minutes to just drink water/tea and that was a good way for all the grade 1 students to remember to hydrate.

Today, we planted morning glory seeds. The Japanese teacher, Mrs. Miyo Kamazaki planned and implemented this idea really well. She ordered the soil, pots, and seeds for the students to use and this was really good as we can link this activity to our unit 2. Mrs. Miyo Kamazaki also had an important lesson with the students about how crucial it is to take care of nature, and growing things with patience and care. This will be important in the students growth, not only for growing morning glory plants, but it is an important lesson in nurturing and being caring to sentient beings and things around you.

This week we also completed our final project for unit 1, “Our personal identities and relationships.” We created the grade 1 Essential Agreements as a good way for us to build good relationships and to have something that we all agreed upon and agreed to respect and follow. This will encourage the students to follow the Learner Profiles Attributes that are key to us.

Thank you so much for visiting our blog this week, and we hope that you enjoyed it. Please continue to take and have a nice weekend. We look forward to seeing you here again soon!