What a week with Pre-k and Kg!

Greeting Parents,

We hope you had a good week. We are happy with how well everyone is communicating on WhatsApp, please keep up the good work. You can also give us suggestions, comments and ask questions. On another note, we are sending assignments to you all, which is mentioned below, and it would be great if you share how they do over the weekends through WhatsApp.

Large group this week

As you all know, a large group is a time where the children explore many things. They get to explore what they cover during exploration time in the large group also. After we introduce what digraph is for the KG’s, they have been busy reading words with digraphs. The Pre-Ks worked on worksheets about spelling where they cut out letters and stick it in the right spelling box. The other fun thing we did was learning French with Miss Alia, she thought us French songs and some of our body parts, like nose, eyes, ears, and more.

Small group this week

Diagraphs and letter blend: this week we took literacy one step bigger, by introducing Diagraphs to kindergartens. Diagraphs are a combination of two letters and give different sounds when reading together. The first thing we ask the KG’s was to read the letter ‘Ch’ and ‘Sh’, they read each letter with the knowledge of Zoo-phonics but as we explain what digraphs are and how to read them together, it was very easy for them. We are encouraging the Pre-k on how to blend letters to read, this week we used words that end with ‘ag’ ‘am’, and ‘it’ to form words like, Bag, Sam, and Fit. Breaking letters will make it quite easy to blend words for them.

Assignment for Kg parents: we will be sending out the digraphs we explored this week so they can practice it more, it would be great if you help them by practicing more words of diagraphs other than the paper will be sent out. Thank you.

Assignment for Pre-k parents: the pre-k is working really hard on the sound of letters. Since we just begin introducing them to blending letters, it will really help them if you take your time to work with them on the sounds of letters, which we will be sending out some letters they explore with this week. While you are at it, you can also help them with words that begin with those letters. Thank you.

Whisper the word: this week we created a fun game where all of us come up with a word and whisper it to our friend next to us, and the friend whispers it to the other friend until it reaches the first friend. Some reach correctly and some reach in a funny way, for example, one friend whisper a banana and it goes around and ends up being “Panaga!” they enjoyed it very much, something you can try to play together over the weekend.

Vitamin in Vegetable: children love their body and whatever makes them strong, after we brought the topic of Vitamins, our groups keep coming to us and let us check their growing muscles because of the vitamins! This week we explore different vegetables and their importance to our body. It is very important for parents to bring what the children have learned in the school to home. Most of our activities are hands-on, but now due to Covid we won't be able to explore fruits by touching and eating them, therefore, it would be great if you can be able to send your child with fruits and vegetables so what they are learning about can make more sense to them.

Measure the book: this week in our Maths session, we continued the topic we started about measurement. This time we introduced one of the measurement tools, which is a ruler, and how we use it only to measure small things. We explore the numbers on it and what the ‘Cm’ represents, which we will try to explore more on as we focus on what measurement is for the time being, and how we can use the ruler to measure different things in our classroom. They get to measure, paper, iPod, tissue box, books, puzzles, and more. If you have rulers at home please help your child to measure things at home.

Special class

Art: if you hear your child mentioning letters in Amharic, do not be surprised because they are learning some letters here. The plan of making Amharic letters in Art come as the children were exploring with Amharic letters in the Ethiopian center. Last week they made their own letters using paint by copying the letters from the flashcards.

Pictures of the week!