Week of 18th – 22nd April

Dear EY3 families,

We had a wonderful, busy first week back on campus after the Songkran break. It’s been wonderful to hear about the children’s adventures these holidays and it sounds like everyone had a great time celebrating Songkran with their families. A HUGE welcome to our new classmates this week and to students who have been learning online. Wynn, Pam, Deedy, RunnRunn, Marvin and Louis all adjusted remarkably well into our community and we are excited to learn more with them next week.

Following the Songkran break, students were excited to share their holiday recounts. Our language focus this week allowed for students to use their communication skills as they created journal entries about their holidays and retold the events making connections to the Songkran celebrations.

Students were excited to continue to learn about measurement and they enjoyed estimating and then measuring various objects around the classroom. Students were comparing the length and used vocabulary such as taller and shorter. They enjoyed using rulers, meter sticks, tape measures and unifix cubes to measure length and height. Predictions were made to inquire about who was the tallest and shortest in the EY3. We integrated measuring into the natural world and students were inspired to measure items from the natural world such as leaves, flowers, and sticks.

It was also a very exciting week as we celebrated Wish’s 6th birthday. We hope you had a lovely time celebrating your special day with your friends and a big thank you to your family for the delicious cupcakes.

Our next unit of inquiry will fall under the transdisciplinary theme ‘How We Express Ourselves”. This unit will focus on the purpose of storytelling, the ways we can tell a story and the connections we make through stories. To get the unit started, we are requesting that children bring in their favourite books to share with the class next week.

As always on Monday EY3 will be bringing library books but they will also choose two books that they can read independently or with some support from an adult. Some books will be wordless picture books which are valuable tools for literacy development as they engage children, regardless of reading level, in prediction, critical thinking and storytelling. A reading record will be used so students can write titles and monitor books they have read and there is also a space for parents’ comments and a space for children to give feedback, through the smiley face column. The library books and independent readers will be changed every Monday. Please see an example of a reading record below.