Hi everyone!
To continue last week’s discussion about growth and how society helps us grow, we took things a step further this week by asking ourselves what our family members currently do or did in the past to help us grow. The students watched videos and short stories about the family unit and how people support each other’s growth. One new thing that came up after watching these videos was that parents help babies grow by protecting them. The mommy chicken in the animated story they watched tried her very best to prevent the egg from falling and breaking. So she protected her child even before it was born;before it hatched.
The key takeaway from our discussion was that even though some dads or moms might not spend a lot of time at home, they still contribute to our growth by going to work and earning money. That money is used to buy us food, clothes, toys, and other things we need, from the time we were born until now.
To review all this knowledge, we completed the worksheet below.
They all gave reasonable explanations for their answer choices. Some said that teachers don’t help babies grow directly because they are not like moms. Others said that babies do not help with learning because learning is difficult and babies cannot read. We always emphasize to the students that there is never a wrong answer. As long as they can explain the reasoning behind what they say, then it is correct!
We celebrated the births of two of our students at the beginning of the week. We wish them both all the happiness and joy the world has to offer! They enjoyed playing fukuwarai with celebrants from other classes, which made the celebration even more special and fun.
For our phonics lesson we learned about the “ug” and “un” consonant blends.
They came across many of the words they had learned during the phonics lesson when they read My Pug Has Fun in their reading lesson. It was truly a full-circle moment, and it was wonderful to see the students recognizing familiar words and realizing how their learning connects across different lessons.
To commemorate Setsubun, they made a ‘bag craft’ to put the beans they will use to chase away the ogre. Their creative and artistic skills shone as they drew the ogre’s facial features and made its horns. They also practiced their fine motor skills by threading string through the holes in the bag to secure the edges.
~The week ahead~
Our inquiry into the topic of growth will gradually progress to helping students understand how people grow and the skills acquired at each stage of the growth timeline. We look forward to seeing you at next week’s swimming observation day.
Thank you for reading our blog this week. Enjoy your weekend!
