Hooked On Books in Foundation Stage
On Friday, 20th of August, we were elated to welcome the team from Hooked on Books to Blouberg International School. The annual event is a highlight in the school and it was with great excitement that the students lined up to go watch the performance in the Junior Hall.
Hooked on Books is a touring Educational Theatre Company that shares their love of books and stories with the students. Each year they choose a selection of stories and dramatise excerpts from the books. The actors are amazing and encourage audience participation, which of course the students love. They end each story on a cliff-hanger to encourage the students to go read the books for themselves.
It was a lovely day and we look forward to Hooked on Books visiting again next year.
Monique Meyer
Reception Year Teacher
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Wild Animals
We are learning more about wild animals in Foundation Stage. Picture books with animal characters are firm favourites with the students and they simply love to observe animals on the whiteboard shows. We even made our own wild animals in Art.
According to an article in ONE GREEN PLANET, animals can teach us 10 important things:
- Compassion: Compassion is based on being able to understand the feelings of others/another.
- Patience: There is no rushing an animal to do anything they aren’t ready to do.
- How to live in the now: People waste so much time obsessed with following ‘what will happen next’ that we completely forget to enjoy the now.
- We’re all connected: Ecosystems only thrive when there is balance.
- Humans aren’t as different as we thought: If there’s ever been a time to re-evaluate our relationship with animals, it’s now.
- Respect your elders: Moving forward and advancing towards innovation is a wonderful thing, but we should also learn to respect the wisdom of those who came before us.
- Responsibility: Growing up with a pet has been shown to instill a deeper understanding in children.
- Listen carefully: Animals sit and listen before they react to situations, something we could surely all stand to do.
- Live lightly: Animals learn to live within their means.
- We must stick together: Being able to set aside differences and work together for the mutual benefit of our species.
Martie van Dyk
Pre-Reception Teacher
Countries Around The World
The Foundation Stage students have really enjoyed the Countries Around the World theme. Each morning we used our imagination to board an aeroplane and fasten our seatbelts to set off for a new country. Using a PowerPoint presentation, we “visited” a new country each day. The students have learnt so much about the landmarks, traditions and cultures of South Africa, Australia, Russia, China, France, England, Spain, America and England over the past two weeks.
We even made our own passports for our daily journey – complete with a drawing of the student’s passport photo and some of their personal information.
This past Friday, the Foundation Stage dressed up according to their favourite country. The students delighted in telling their classmates which country they had chosen, which was a real highlight of the theme. The students were also treated to an amazing Inting by Gilly the Storyteller. She skillfully used the student’s imaginations to bring the lovely stories she told to life.
Now that the travel bug has bitten, we are sure to have many world travelers in the years to come.
Bronwen Nuthall
Reception Year Teacher
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International Day Of Friendship
International Day of Friendship is a day to appreciate and promote friendship. It was celebrated across the world on Friday, 30 July.
International Day of Friendship promotes the idea that building friendships between people, countries and cultures can inspire peace and build bridges between those communities.
Friendship requires empathy, compassion and concern for other people. By valuing these friendships we adopt a more selfless and grateful outlook on life.
In the Pre-Reception we spoke about what we think makes a good friend, we decided that good friends…
- Help each other
- Play together
- Give friends love
- Share
- Are nice to each other
- Says kind words
- Draws pictures for one another and makes things as gifts to give each other
The students then drew and decorated a picture and gave it to an existing or new friend, they had lots of fun doing this! All in all it was a wonderful day, especially because we got to come to school in pyjamas for civvies day too.
This day can help build a more kind, caring and peaceful world!
Cindy Nunan
Nursery and Pre-Reception Teacher
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Sing Along Learning
At Blouberg International School, in Reception Year, our little ones learn in many different ways, but singing songs is one of our favourites! They love learning new songs and actions and are always very happy to share their favourite songs with everyone.
Did you know:
One way or another, children are exposed to and involved with singing from their earliest years. Whether it’s a parent singing them to sleep, or the opening theme song from their favourite TV programme, singing plays an important part in a child’s development.
Learning a piece of information attached to a melody embeds that information more rapidly in a child’s mind. The majority of children learn the alphabet and numbers not by simply saying them but singing them.
Monique Meyer
Reception Year Teacher
This was our rendition of a counting song…
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The Benefits Of Fairy Tales
Fairy Tales are essential stories for childhood. These stories are more than just happily ever after, they portray real moral lessons through characters shown in the stories.
Frequent exposure to Fairy Tales will benefit your child creatively, intelligently and emotionally:
Creative development:
- Imagination – Fairy Tales are examples of storytelling at its best and it is the most effective way to teach a story to all students.
- Diversity – You might find stories which are thoughtful, romantic and even action orientated.
- General Connection – Fairy Tales can bridge the generational gap between students and their grandparents by providing common stories for them to relate to.
Cognitive Expansion:
- Critical Thinking – The language of Fairy Tales is uncomplicated, it’s often easier for students to understand.
- Vocabulary – Students vocabulary grows with every story.
Emotional Development:
- Problem solving – Fairy Tales are often filled with non-examples for students to follow, but it is seeing these characters make poor choices that our students learn of better ways to handle problems.
We learned so much during the last two weeks. We also dressed up as fairy tale characters and pirates. Then we participated in a Treasure Hunt.
Martie van Dyk
Pre-Reception Teacher
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Learning About Frogs In Reception Year
We have been learning about frogs in Reception Year. The students were excited to find that frogs are amphibians and that they live on the land as well as in water. The students loved listening to a song that explains all about the frog life cycle.
See the link below:
https://youtu.be/wGIc7KitJCA
Did you know… an interesting fact about frogs is that although they breathe using their lungs, they can also take in some oxygen through their skin when swimming for longer periods. They are also able to smell better under water than on land.
The students were fascinated to see how a frog can catch its prey using its sticky tongue. We listened to the story of the Wide Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner and made a picture of a wide mouthed frog catching a bug on its tongue for art.
Bronwen Nuthall
Reception Year Teacher
In Pre-Reception This Week, We Are Learning About…
This week Pre-Reception are learning about Frogs! The students are very excited to learn interesting facts about frogs and their life cycle.
Some interesting facts they are learning:
- They are amphibians.
- They typically lay their eggs in the water and a group of eggs is a frogspawn.
- The eggs hatch into tadpoles.
- A group of frogs is called an army.
- Tadpoles have no lungs, they have gills. They grow lungs before they mature into a frog.
The students really enjoyed painting and making their own frogs in their creative activities. They learnt a new rhyme, Five Green Speckled Frogs and had such fun singing together.
In Literacy, the sound of the week is ‘d’. The students eagerly practiced writing the letter in rice with their finger. They excitedly found objects in the class that start with ‘d’. I was very impressed with what they found. A duck, dinosaur, door, a drawing, doll etc. They loved learning the action and song for the letter ‘d’.
In Numeracy this week, they are practicing to recognize numbers 1 – 5 and put them in the correct order.
It has been a very busy learning week; we have also been doing messy sensory activities to strengthen their fine motor muscles. All in all the students have had lots of fun learning through play!
Cindy Nunan
Pre-Reception Teacher
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
In Reception we have been learning all about different insects.
As part of our topic we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The students loved the story and decided to make their very own Hungry Caterpillar book.
Our little authors did such a good job, especially loving reading their little book once they were done.
WATCH: https://youtu.be/MIwbXYpF1RA
Monique Meyer
Reception Year Teacher
