Lakes, Islands, Suites and Archipelago's

Dear Mommies and Daddies,

We had a fun day of discovery and play today. As part of our International month we have been looking at the world map on the classroom wall and the flags at the bottom of it. Today we saw on the table four trays with funny shapes raised or lowered into the surface. Next to the trays was a jug of water which looked really blue. Darren told us that he had put a little bit of food coloring in the water to make it look nice and be easy to see. We then poured the water into the first tray and saw that the water filled the deep hole. This we discovered is just like a lake with water in the middle and land all the way around the outside. We rushed to the map on the wall looking for lakes. We found some big lakes in Russia and close to the Canadian border. Coming back to the table we filled the second tray which was a reverse of the first with water all the way around the outside called an island. Again we rushed to the map and found there were many islands including Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom. The third tray showed a series of lakes together called a suite of lakes, and the last was a series of islands called an archipelago. We found lots of examples of these on our class map today all over the world. On the main table we continued with our special canvas artwork. We used some shaped stencils today with the acrylic paint and then using a stiff brush we stippled paint through the holes. The paintings are starting to look really nice now. We hope to add more to them tomorrow morning. Play on the carpet today revolved around the four play-tents which became a home with food, cushions, musical instruments and lots of friends coming to play. The wooden blocks and construction sets were popular with many of our friends too this morning with us making fans, marble runs and toy lollipops together. After packing away the toys we all made a circle and with Pooja focused on our ‘value’ this month ‘standing strong’. Pooja read a book to us all about doing the right thing, making the right choices and standing up for what you believe. It was a great book, thank you Pooja. In our main circle time we had our weekly phonics session. We again broke into 2 groups and groups and in the first group we did a big review of all the letters we have learnt so far. We matched many picture cards with the starting wooden letter sounds with Pooja. We also played a ‘mystery bag’ game guessing things that start with the sounds Pooja suggested. The second group were working on the vowel sounds and completed a short task writing the words ‘pig’, ‘hat’, ‘bus’ and ‘bed’ without any of the teachers helping. We did a great job with this! The park was a little chilly but we enjoyed seeing our friends from Petals class already there. One of our friends found a 100 yen coin on the floor and we tried to give it to the police officer on the way back to school but he told us he couldn’t take it and so we put the money in our class GIVE jar to help other children. We hope we made the right decision!

Have a great afternoon,

Love,

Darren, Pauline, Pooja and all the international travelers in Flowers Class.