Newsletter 23.06.17

It's hard to believe the academic year has come to an end. Time certainly does fly when you're having fun! This week the children have enjoyed choosing all of our class activities. We had fun building with lego and discovered that there are so many different possibilities ... The blue group were given 5 bricks and asked to build a duck. Each of the children built a duck that was unique. When we repeated the activity we got 12 more!

In the Fundino playground we dug rivers and swimming pools to cool off our feet and enjoyed the splash pool. The children enjoyed getting a close look at some teeth and talked a lot about how to care for our teeth and gums. Using the plastic mouth and teeth moulds the children practised brushing. Please continue to encourage your child to be independent with self care skills to help prepare them for the transition to F3 (brushing teeth, using the toilet (cleaning their own bottom), washing hands, changing clothes and eating sensibly using a fork or spoon.

On Wednesday morning the children visited their F3 classrooms. They were very excited to explore the new classroom and spend some time with Mr Jon, Ms Chau, Ms Van, Ms Trinh and Ms Sara.

What a fantastic year we have had experimenting, playing, exploring, investigating, questioning and wondering together. The children have worked hard developing learning dispositions that will support them to become confident and capable learners and communicators, secure in their sense of belonging to our BIS community. On behalf of the F2 team we wish these bright young children all the best on the exciting next step of their learning journey in F3!

Thank you for all of your support this year, we really appreciate and value the relationship we have with our parent community. We wish you all a restful and relaxing summer break and look forward to catching up in August :-)

Below are some suggestions of activities to do with your children over the summer holidays. Have fun playing together! 

• Puzzles
• Read stories every day
• Mark-making activities; crayons, paint, pencils, markers, chalk, water and a brush.
• Arts and crafts; cutting and sticking (for inspiration google 'kindergarten craft activities)
• Play simple board games and card games together (talking about turn taking and how to play by the rules).
•  Play outside; run, jump, roll, ride bikes, play ball games (throwing, catching and rolling), hopscotch, skipping, swimming
• Support your child's independence - let them show you that they can do things by themselves; tidying up their toys, feeding themselves, doing small jobs

Please find below a list of websites you might enjoy exploring with your child, these contain a range of Maths and Phonics activities -

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?Subject=37

http://www.cbeebies.com/?cdrid=qsZT9alppV

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

http://www.kizphonics.com/

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2.html

http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html

http://www.ictgames.com/resources.html

Old Uniform Collection

 If you have any old BIS school uniform that you do not need anymore, please bring these items to school this week and leave in the “Uniform Collection Box” located in the foyer.  The old uniforms will be upcycled into new and exciting items to be sold next academic year e.g. bags and mobile phone holders.  All money raised will be put towards our community partners.

Thank you for your support!

Newsletter 16.06.17

Lights, action....camera! 

It's show time in EYFS! The children have been practising ALL week in preparation for the show today. And what a stella performance it was! Our grumpy old trolls looked good and grumpy as they waited for a goat to trip-trap over their bridge. Our bears were scary and our Goldilocks', well... they didn't mean to break all the bears things.  I'm sure you were as relieved as we were to discover that that the Wolf, Witch, Troll and Goldilocks were all misunderstood and got invited to the party in the end :-)

Our enthusiastic F2 class did a wonderful job performing their songs, remembering to sing and dance. Being on stage really pushes some of our young learners out of their comfort zone, we are very proud of them all. We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did.


Notices:

Reports - End of Year school Reports go live today via Tapestry, please take time to read your child's report.  If you have any questions, we are happy to arrange a time to meet with you.

Swimming - We will be swimming as per usual on both Monday and Thursday next week.

Party - Friday 23rd June is our last day of school, so F2 will celebrate with a PARTY! Fun, games, dancing, singing and a shared party snack. Please see the sign up sheet outside our F2 classroom if you are able to help by bringing in something to share.

Open Afternoon - Tuesday 20th June. Starting with an EYFS back to school meeting in the multi-purpose room at 1.30pm.  Afterwards please join us in F2. This is an opportunity for the children to show you some of their mark-making and share their favourite games and activities. We look forward to seeing you!

Please note that school breaks up for Summer Holidays on Friday 23rd June at 11.30am.

Newsletter 09.06.2017

This week in F2:

Classroom
It has been a fun filled week in the F2 classroom. The children engaged in various activities such as making slime and fairytale mark-making. We have also been busy fitting the children's costumes for our summer production. Our F2s are trying their very best to learn the song words and actions to the songs Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Grumpy Old Troll and It's A Party. I am sure they all can't wait to perform for the mum and dads! 

Big Pool
On Monday, Ms Sara and Mr Chau introduced the big pool to our F2 children.  They were divided into three groups. They learnt to use the ladder safely to get in and out of the pool.  The children also focused on learning to getting in and out using the edge of the pool.  They moved around the pool in different ways showing the confindence they've built in the splashpool over the year. Ms Sara and and I are really pleased7 with all our children responded to being in the TX big pool for the first time.

Next Week
Next Week is a very busy week for our F2 children.
We hope to see you all at the EYFS Summer production on Friday. 

Thank you for your continuing support!

Slime Ingredients:
1 cup PVA glue
100ml ariel powergel
2 drops food colour (optional)
1 tablespoon glitter (optional)

Notices:

Library
Please return any books you have borrowed from the Library

EYFS Summer Concert

Newsletter 02.06.17

The children have begun preparations for our end of year EYFS show. Busily finishing off decorations to hang in the Hall and learning 3 new songs - Goldilocks, Grumpy Troll and It's a Party. See the links below for the songs we are learning.

Next week the children are going to visit the big pool with Mr Chau, in preparation for Swimming in F3. We hope to have 2 or 3 swimming sessions there before the end of term. We are also targeting fine motor development more, as we near the end of the term. Fine motor skills are the ability to use our fingers, thumb and palm effectively. Children who have strong fine motor development find it easier to write.

 In targeting fine motor control skills this week we have been fishing in Fundino, building with nuts and bolts, using one handed tools like scissors and scoops, and mark-making of course! The children are making good progress developing their pencil grips and we are seeing an improvement in their control and co-ordination when using one-handed tools. If you'd like to support your child at home to further develop these skills try -
 doing puzzles
cutting with scissors
finger painting
drawing with pencils/crayons/felts/chalk
painting
using finger puppets
squeezing clothes pegs
playing with blocks
throwing/rolling small balls
threading

Our Dress Up day on Tuesday was very exciting! The children were eager to share 'who' they were and 'what' special powers they had. We had numerous magical princesses and princes (even a King), superheroes and so many more fairy tale friends. We hope you enjoy the photos!

Newsletter 26.05.17

In F2 this week there has been a lot of dressing up and exciting fairytale role-play. "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales." It's hard to argue with Albert Einstein! So the teachers have been reading a lot of stories, further fostering this budding interest. We will be having a dress up day on Tuesday too (see poster attached).

In Literacy this week the children have been building on their understanding and retell of The Gingerbread Man.  Using masks, the children have acted out the story.  With some reminding they were able to remember the refrains. Next week we will be drawing our story maps, ready to retell The Gingerbread Man with increasing independence and expression. Our end goal is to make some alterations and adapt the story to make it our own.

The children also made their own gingerbread people cookies and wondered whether they would run away.  Just to make sure they didn't, many children ate the legs first! The children also added their own unique facial expressions and buttons to their cookies using 'icing pens'.

For a simple Cookie cutter recipe we used -

200g softened butter
1/2 c sugar
2 c flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp ginger powder

In preparation for our up and coming EYFS show, the children have started making decorations - gingerbread men decorations ofcourse! Many of the children were challenged using scissors to cut out their shapes but persevered, adding smaller shapes to create expressive faces and fancy buttons. You can admire them hanging in the F2 classroom. We also enjoyed a gingerbread man maths game.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/gingerbread-man-game

On Thursday MP1 invited us to watch the dress rehearsal of their show The Goblin Next Door. The stage and costumes looked fabulous, bright and exciting.  We were very impressed with the sensational singing and confidence of the children. It will be our turn on stage soon enough!

F2 enjoyed taking a close look at some tadpoles Ms Sara found.  We watched a short time lapse video of the amazing transformation that tadpoles go through to become frogs.  The children also found a dead dragon fly outside that we carefully put into a bug catcher to get a better look at. If you find anything interesting during your weekend adventures, we'd love have a look at school.

Have a great weekend!

Notices:

Dress Up on Tuesday 30th May -

Library - Please return Library books to school on Tuesday and put them in the basket outside the classroom.