Every week brings new opportunities for our little learners to explore and discover. This week was filled with exciting moments as the children continued building their knowledge through fun, hands-on activities.
We are steadily making progress in discovering letters and sounds. During the week, we focused on the letter S and its sound. The children enjoyed singing the Jolly Phonics song and its action, helping them become familiar with the sound it makes. Together, we identified words that started with the sound /s/. We came across words such as sun, sunny, sea, sad, and sit. The children also got creative and thought of their own words, including song, surprised, scared, schoolyard play, and stop. It was lovely to see them making connections sharing their ideas. To extend their learning, they continued exploring the letter S by using playdough to make as many S shapes as they could. It was a fun and hands-on way to practise recognising and forming the letter while strengthening their little fingers!
As part of our preparations for the winter show, the children watched an animated version of the story they will be bringing to life through role-play. They watched with great enthusiasm and excitement, especially when the Nanny Goat rescued her little goats. There were joyful reactions and little leaps of excitement as the happy ending unfolded! Afterwards, we asked the children how they felt about the ending of the story. We heard lovely responses such as, “I am happy,” “The baby goats are scared,” and “I am excited.” The plot and storyline were also shared with the children to give them an idea of what to expect and what they would be doing on stage. They listened with interest and are already showing great eagerness to begin practising their lines and taking on their different roles in the coming weeks.
We continued exploring our Unit of Inquiry, focusing on recognizing and expressing different feelings. This week, the children were shown visuals depicting a variety of everyday situations and were encouraged to look closely, think about what was happening and share how they would feel if they found themselves in similar situations. It was lovely to hear their different responses as they connected the pictures to their own feelings and experiences. We heard some students say, happy, “It makes me happy”, “Surprise”, “Halloween party”. Through this activity, the children had an opportunity to continue developing their emotional awareness while learning that different situations can bring about different feelings
We also revisited our observations from our visit to the Matsumoto City Museum of Art, where we explored the works of the famous artist Yayoi Kusama.
Inspired by her creative way of expressing herself through art, we decided to become little artists ourselves and show our feelings through drawing. The class was divided into two groups, with each group given a large sheet of paper to use as their canvas. The children happily got to work, filling their canvases with drawings and sharing stories about what they had created. The canvases were displayed on the wall as they were encouraged to continue expressing their feeling on there especially during the work station time. It was particularly lovely to hear some of them mention their family members and describe how they felt, saying things like, “Mummy is happy” and “Daddy is happy.” This activity further enabled the children explore how art can be used to communicate feelings and ideas while expressing themselves freely and creatively.
This week, we enjoyed reading The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas. The story sparked lots of comments and discussions as the children explored the different emotions represented by colours. They were quick to identify that red represents anger, yellow happiness, black fear, green calmness, blue sadness and pink love.
Inspired by the story, each child was given a picture of an uncoloured Colour Monster, which they were encouraged to colour to express how they were feeling. It was lovely to see them make their colour choices and use their creativity to communicate their emotions. Through this activity, the children continued developing their understanding of different feelings and discovered another fun way of expressing how they feel.
What a lovely week of learning and discovery! We look forward to more exciting moments as our little learners continue to grow, explore and express themselves.
