Hi everyone! Welcome to our last blog of January.It goes without saying that the highlight of our week was our field trip to Kamada Elementary School. The MW students were partnered with Grade 1 students, who showed them around the classrooms, and they spent time playing together in the school playground. When we reflected after we got back to school, many students talked about the differences they noticed between that elementary school and ISN pre-school. “The playground was bigger,” “there were more kids than here,” “their tables were different from ours;they had drawers to put stuff in,” and “the Grade 1s looked bigger than us” were some of the comments shared during reflection time.(Due to privacy issues we couldn’t take pictures to share in the blog).
To continue our inquiry into how people grow and change, we shifted our focus this week to the toddler and child stages of growth. We defined a toddler as someone who is just beginning to learn how to walk and talk, and a child as someone aged between 4 and 6 years. In campus terms, this includes students in the Shooting Star and Milky Way classes.Through guided discussions and hands-on actions, students reflected on what babies, toddlers, and children are able to do, and how these abilities change over time.
The students demonstrated a clear understanding that at the child stage of growth, they are capable of doing more complex tasks than babies and toddlers. More importantly, they were able to explain why certain age groups can or cannot do specific actions. This showed strong development in their thinking and communication skills, as they justified their ideas using prior knowledge and observations.
After each action, students were encouraged to reflect and respond to open-ended questions. Their explanations revealed thoughtful reasoning and age-appropriate scientific understanding. For example, they shared that babies cannot clap using three fingers because their hands are not fully developed yet. Others explained that babies cannot count to ten because they are still learning how to speak and do not yet understand numbers. Students also recognized that toddlers may not be able to write letters because they are still learning the alphabet. One insightful observation highlighted that while a child can crawl, they usually choose not to, as walking is a more advanced and efficient skill at this stage of growth.
The activity encouraged them to be open-minded, as they considered different perspectives and stages of development, and to be reflective, thinking about their own growth and abilities.Overall, this learning experience helped students make meaningful connections between themselves and the world around them, deepening their understanding of how people grow, change, and develop new skills with time and support.
While a child is technically anyone under the age of 18, we decided that learning about growth all the way to 18 years might be just a tiny bit too much for our 6-year-olds (one life stage at a time!). For now, we are wrapping up our inquiry at the day-care stage of life.We will briefly talk about adulthood as it relates to their dream jobs. The rest of the journey will surely be explored in detail when the students start their exciting new chapters in elementary school.That said, after spending six years at an IB school, our students are already skilled researchers. When they begin Grade 1, they’ll be more than ready to explore the other stages of growth on their own,curiosity and all!😃
For our phonics lesson, students explored the double consonant “ll” sound. They expanded their vocabulary bank by adding words such as bill, mall, hill, drill, anthill, nutshell, foothill, and farewell. To reinforce learning, they participated in an interactive game using paper cups and balls, where they aimed to throw a ball into a cup and then read the word written under it.
It is said that the early bird catches the fattest worm. In light of this, we have started preparing for the graduation day event by making origami hearts. These hearts will be used as part of our decorations.
~The week ahead~
Next week, we will gradually shift our focus to the different career choices available as we review all the aspects of growth we have talked about so far.
Thank you for reading our blog this week.
Have a nice weekend!
