Term 3 Week 3: May 2nd-6th 

Happy Birthday to Ella and Elsa! Thank you for celebrating with us.

Even though it was a short week this week, we managed to get in a lot of learning and fun. First, we would like to thank this week’s Special Helpers – Ty, Gawin, Zuri, Sea, Charkin and Lalin. Although names are selected randomly, those selected students are still asked if they would like to be the next day’s special helpers. Some have chosen to accept while others have declined. In doing so, the students are getting a chance to practice choice-making skills and exercise their autonomy. Many students continue to be very proud of their extra responsibilities being a Special Helper for the day.

We also want to say a huge Thank You! to our P’Nit and P’Annie for making sure our toys and classroom are cleaned everyday after school so that they are ready for us to use the next day! We are so lucky! ❤️

Important | Student-Led Conferences

Please save the date! Monday, May 16th is the date for our Student-Led Conferences. This will not be a school day for students. On this day, families can sign up for one-hour time slots and students are expected to come in their school uniforms with their family members at the time they have signed up for. Please note that a negative ATK submitted the day before is required for anyone coming onto campus. This is the first time in two years that parents are able to visit the classrooms, so we are all very excited! Student-Led Conferences are a great opportunity for students to share a variety of classroom learning experiences with their family. Please note that sign-up sheets will be sent out from the Primary School Office soon. Students with siblings in the Primary School will get the sign-up sheets a little sooner so that these families can organize their children’s conference times accordingly.

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This Week’s Learning & Fun
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Unit of Inquiry

This week, we started our new unit, “Investigations,” under the transdisciplinary theme, How the World Works. In this unit, we start our inquiries into what is a scientist, who can be a scientist and what do scientists do. Over the coming weeks, we will look into what wonderings we might have about the world around us and how we go about investigating possible answers to our questions.

In line with our new unit, a new center has been set up. Students are loving opportunities to explore all the different things at the Science Center.

Math and Literacy

For this term, our Math focus is on measurement. The students have been asked to tune in about measurement through our daily morning questions. Further discussions are carried out in the day as we look at our guesses to the morning questions and what we need to pay attention to when we practice our measuring skills. Some students noted, “The Lego pieces have to be the same size.” Another student added, “There are ‘holes.’ They have to be next to each other.

For Literacy, we continue to focus on exposing students to rhymes and listening for rhymes. Rhyming helps students learn about “words, sounds and language formation,” which is critical to students’ development of their early literacy skills. (source) Songs are a fun way to learn about rhymes. A favorite continues to be “Down by the Bay.” We started learning “This Old Man” this week. Feel free to sing these at home too.

Weather Info Board

To practice our observation skills for our new unit on “Investigations,” a “Weather Info Board” has been set up. From next week, each day, we will observe and record the weather we see for that day. We will also practice making predictions (weather forecast) based on what we know so far and what information we can find.

Fun Friday

Our EY1 students had so much fun visiting the Science Lab in the Secondary School last week. Thank you again to the Grade 11 students who took time to show us some very cool experiments. For Fun Friday this week, we continued the fun and learning with some experiments of our own. Be sure to ask the students about the “volcanoes” we made in class for Fun Friday! The students made observations and then made drawings of their predictions of how much of a reaction there would be in the volcano.

Photo Gallery – Week of May 2nd-6th

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Parenting Corner
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Mind in the Making – The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs by Ellen Galinsky

Essential Life Skill #3

“Communicating calls on executive function skills, including paying attention in order to determine what we want to communicate (focus); thinking about how our communications will be understood by others (cognitive flexibility); and by substituting what we want to say for another way of expressing ourselves, especially if our original approach isn’t the most effective way to communicate (inhibitory control).”

“Children build the Life Skill of Communicating when they engage in back and forth conversations – through words, gestures or symbols to indicate what they want to convey – and pay attention to how it will be understood by others so they can continue the conversation.” (from mindinthemaking.org)

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Upcoming Dates & Reminders
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For Next Week:

• May 9 – EY1 Swim Day
  Students bring swim bags and all necessary items.
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• May 11 | 10:30am | Primary School Q & A
  [ for meeting link, please see email “Parent Update from HOS – May 6th” ]
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• May 13 – Library Day
  Bring books back to swap!
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Looking Ahead…

• May 16 | Student-Led Conferences (No school for students)
  Please see above for more details.
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Thank you for your continued support and partnership! Have a restful weekend!

EY1 Team 😊

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