Holiday News
The winter holidays are often a challenge for many parents especially when there are rainy days. However, the Year 1 students enjoyed the time at home and had lots of fun.
Usually on the first day back at school, they love to share their news with their peers, but could not do that with online learning. Instead, they have practiced their writing skills and wrote about the highlights of their holiday.
Ann Cordner
Year 1 Teacher
Shadow Puppet Shows
This Term the Year 5’s explored shadows in Science.
Did you know…
“A shadow puppet uses a silhouette to represent the puppet. Long ago, people recorded their history by telling stories. This was before writing was invented. In ancient China and Indonesia, storytellers used shadow puppets to help tell stories. Each Village’s storyteller was known as a puppet master. When he put on a show the whole village would watch. He used his hands and even his feet to make a puppet move. He also added noise effects.”
Year 5NM delved excitedly into the task of planning and preparing their own shadow puppet shows. The students wrote play scripts filled with adventure and mystery. They creatively cut out silhouette characters and props for the setting of their stage. They used bed sheets as their screens and torches, headlamps and lampshades as their light source. It was a massive task of planning and rehearsing to get everything ready.
Storylines included tales of forests and challenges, camp adventures and under the sea mermaids. Careful thought went into the character design. Students were able to manipulate the size of the shadow by moving the silhouette characters closer or further away from their light source.
Lots of fun and excitement was had by all. Well done Year 5!
Nadia Mahomed
Year 5 Teacher
Working With Clay
“There is a relationship between sight and touch, something about eyes being able to see through the fingers touching the clay, about fingers being able to feel what the eyes are seeing without the fingers actually touching it.” – Jose Saramago
During the Term, our Year 2 students learnt about Manipulating Materials in Science. The students were enthusiastic and showed an eager attitude towards this concept, so to end off the Term, the Year 2 students were given some clay to manipulate into making a small bowl, which they would later paint if they wish to.
Clay plays an important role in developmental growth in students from a young age. Manipulating (squishing, squeezing, pulling, pushing, etc.) helps develop a student’s large and small muscles, fosters eye-hand coordination, builds on fine motor skills and it helps teach to them the ability to focus.
The use of clay with infants and toddlers allows for discovery of body awareness as it provides a tactical experience. The older the student gets, the more creative he/she may find themselves when manipulating clay which is extremely important for the developmental growth of all students.
“Learn to humble yourself, you are but earth and clay.” – Thomas Kempis
Erin Hierse
Year 2 Teacher
Our Values
The year 4’s have been inspired by the Eisteddfod Art competition. For the competition, their art needs to include the Nautilus of the Blouberg International School crest and the values of BIS:
Dedication
Excellence
Respect
Responsibility
Integrity
Stewardship
Leadership
The lesson was a great opportunity to discuss these values with the students and was thoroughly integrated with our Global Perspectives learning outcomes.
Learners also learned the skill of paper marbling, which linked to our Science lessons, where they learned about states of matter and density. It was so lovely to share the skill with the learners as it is a lesson that I remember doing when I was about 10 years old.
Many learners are still busy completing the project and we can’t wait to see their interpretation of it.
You can try it at home, but be careful as you need to use oil-based paint. See the following link.
Marlize Keyser
Year 4 Teacher
Group Work
Group work is so important for students, providing great opportunities for them to develop and practise their skills such as listening to each other, working with others, helping and thinking of solutions
The students have had a lot of fun planning and producing pictures in their groups over a couple of weeks together.
Here are some of their creations:
Charlotte Cronje
Year 1 Teacher
Landscape Art
In Art, the Year 6’s have been working on creating their own landscape art pieces.
As a class, we looked at many different images of landscapes, including paintings and photographs. We discussed the following elements of landscape composition: background, foreground, horizon, the source of light, lines that lead the eye, natural features and manmade features.
The students then went on to creating their rough sketches of natural features from some of the paintings and photographs that we looked at. Once this was done, they looked at local landscapes in our beautiful city and sketched the different landscapes, paying close attention to detail.
The final push was picking one local landscape and creating their own variations of a local landscape, using various techniques that they learnt in Term 1 and Term 2.
The Year 6’s really impressed their teachers by creating these familiar landscapes in Cape Town, including Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, the Waterfront, Boulders Beach and many more! We are so proud of the hard work and effort they put into their art pieces and how they have taken what they have learnt and applied it.
“Art is a place for children to learn to trust their ideas, themselves, and to explore what is possible” – Maryann F. Kohl
Brittney Hakime
Year 6 Teacher
Have Boxes, Glue And Decorations?
Last week, the Year 2 classes were given the task to design and build anything they wanted to… We decided not to be prescriptive, as we were keen to see what ideas they came up with.
They were given the opportunity to plan their designs, identifying items they would need. So on Friday, armed with bags of boxes, glues, empty toilet rolls, decorations and paper, they eagerly waited for their teachers to say, “It’s time for Design and Technology now”.
I was really impressed by how the students worked together, shared decorations and motivated and supported each other.
Some of their projects didn’t come out quite as they had hoped. We discussed the reasons for this and they were able to identify that some glue was not strong enough or some boxes were too floppy.
All in all, it was fun and our students learned some valuable lessons!
Kim Coetzer
Year 2 Teacher
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Celebrating Healthy Living
I pledge to stay healthy and clean
through exercise and good hygiene.
I will eat balanced meals every day
to have more energy to learn and to play.
Every night I will get a good rest
To be more ready to do my best
If I work to be healthy and strong
I’ll be happier my whole life long.
(Poet unknown)
In Science, this term, Year 3 learnt about what it means to lead a healthy lifestyle. They started by examining their own food habits and creating a personal ‘food pyramid’ and then moved on to investigating the contents of their lunch boxes, recording findings and making conclusions based on these findings. We looked at how important it is to get enough sleep, researched what happens to our bodies after we exercise and conducted an experiment investigating why too much sugar is bad for our teeth.
The students also enjoyed a Healthy Day Inting. The day was spent with the students participating in some fun group activities, sports and games. Each student was also supplied with a delicious, healthy goodie bag for lunch and we had some VERY tired Year 3’s at the end of the day!
Our delicious goodie bags.
(NOTE: This Inting occurred before school sport was cancelled by the WCED, all content in this article was photographed and recorded before the cancellation.)
We ended the unit with the students presenting individual posters and orals on what it means to live a healthy lifestyle. Students had their classmates riveted with their creative, innovative designs and exciting presentations. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your presentations! Well done on an amazing job, Year 3!
Mandy Goch
Year 3 Teacher
Liam with his poster.
Thabelo with his poster.
Peyton with her poster.
Nahla with her poster.
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Telling The Time
The students of Year 1 are learning to tell the time.
At this age, the students need very practical sessions to learn new concepts. Our first lesson was a recap of what the students already know. Building on their prior knowledge of morning, afternoon, day and night, how we know when it is morning and night and different units of time.
We talked about an analogue clock, what is a day and an hour as a unit of time. Of course, we had to make a clock and then show the o’clock time on our clocks. We had lots of fun playing “What’s the time Mr Wolf’?”
The students had lots of practice making the time on their clocks and asking a friend to tell them the time. They also asked each other how many hours from 6 o’clock to 8 o’clock. Next term we will learn to tell the “half past”.
Ann Cordner
Year 1 Teacher
All About Recipes
“Cooking with kids is not just about ingredients, recipes and cooking. It’s about harnessing imagination, empowerment and creativity” – Guy Fiery
Last week for Show and Tell, our Year 2’s were asked to each bring a favourite recipe with them to school that they could chat to their class about. They were expected to tell their friends about the ingredients you would need as well as the method and instructions needed to create your culinary masterpiece.
Some leaners made beautiful posters, some drew their own pictures of their desired recipes and others even went as far as actually making their dish at home and bringing some to school to show us. Some exciting recipes included chocolate brownies, sandwiches, banana bread, cupcakes and even some chocolate cake.
Following instructions in any area of life can help young children learn and practice some basic math concepts and build language skills. In this specific area, following a recipe and the experience of creating meals with family and friends can help to build self-confidence and lay the foundation for an understanding in where food comes from, how we use it to express ourselves as well as a good practice in healthy eating habits.
We immensely enjoyed exploring each learner’s foodie favourites. So much fun was had!
Siobhan Hendry
Year 2 Teacher
