Welcome to Smart Squad! We had the best week together and look forward to a fantastic year ahead.
Here is a breakdown of what we got up to this week.
Writing and Phonics: In Grade R we work in a writing book. We decorated the front cover of our books and practiced writing our names in our books. We also spoke about what we got up to over the December holidays. The Squaders traced over the words “My Holiday” and then drew a picture of their fun December break!
Maths: We went over our numbers and played a number recognition game. We then did a colour by number owl picture which will be used for the front cover of our Maths book. We also traced over the numbers 1-10 in our writing book.
Life Skills: We spoke about our holidays and what we got up to. We also spoke about the theme of the week and went over the classroom rules. We spoke about why it is important to follow these rules and how these rules can keep us safe.
Creative: Once the children had completed their front covers for their writing and Maths books, we did a self-portrait. We also reflected on our first day of school and did a hanging art piece of: Me, My Finger Prints, My Teachers and My Classroom.
It has been a great week!
See you all next week, have a lovely weekend!
Time flies when you are having fun!
Can you believe that your babies are in Grade R!
One more year of Pre-School Moms and Dads!
Dates to Diarise:
Haircut Day – 19 January
Bonfire Picnic – 28 January
(weather permitting)
Lots of love
Teacher Amber, Teacher Carla and the Smart Squad Assistants
Can you believe that we only have 1 week left of school!
We started off this week listening to each other’s weekend news. We introduced this week’s theme: Cooking and Food. We spoke about what our favourite food is and how we think it is made. We discussed the different food that we have during Christmas and other special occasions.
Writing and Phonics: This week we focused on our “ub” and “ug” word family. We learnt our new words and did the “ub” and “ug” worksheet. We also did our “ub” and “ug” word family sentences without our writing cats. We are so proud at how beautifully they are writing all on their own!
Maths: We recapped addition and subtraction and did some practical examples before practicing addition and subtraction sums in our Maths books. We also recapped mental mathematics using our fingers to count.
Life Skills: We spoke about appreciating food and those who feed us. We spoke about why it is important to not waste food and to be thankful to those that make our food.
Creative Art: We continued with our Christmas art to get us into the holiday spirit and practiced graduation too!
It has been a great week.
See you all next week.
Such a beautiful evening!
What a success our Graduation was! We hope you loved it as much as we did.
We are so proud of our Smart Squad children and will miss each and every one of them!
Please remember:
Christmas boxes for your child’s art
Flash sticks for reports
Last few items for our 12 Days of Christmas Charity Drive
Can you believe that we are almost at the end of the year!
This theme really gets us in the holiday spirit and we got so excited talking about our favourite type of holiday and where we would like to go this December.
Writing and Phonics: This week we focused on our “ot” word family. We learnt our new words and did the “ot” worksheet. We also did our “ot” word family sentences without our writing cats. We can’t believe how far our Smart Squad children have come from the beginning of the year. The children also drew a self-portrait and reflected on how much they have grown throughout the year.
Maths: We recapped addition and subtraction and did some practical examples before practicing addition and subtraction sums in our maths books.
Life skills: We spoke about what loyalty means. We spoke about making promises and making sure we keep those promises.
Creative: We started with some Christmas art to get us in the holiday spirit and continued to practice for our graduation.
I packed my trunk and in it I put ...
This is such a fun game to play with your kiddies during those long hours in the car on the way to your holiday destination!
Plus … it is a great way to boost their memory Skills!
There are two things children should get from there parents:
Wow what a week it has filled with tons of excitement!
Our week started off with listening to each others fun weekend news and interacting in a broad discussion of each others weekend.
Our theme this week was Shops and Shopping. We had a lot of fun discussing what our favourite shops are. We also discussed what we buy at the shops as well as what types of shops we go to. We spoke about what we use to buy our favourite things. We discussed the type of money we use in South Africa. We had so much fun going to our very own EcoShop! We got to choose 5 of our favourite items and pay for them at the till. The children absolutely LOVED this experience! We had the Curious Crew market day as well. We took our knowledge learnt to buy some more of our favourite items. We ended off the week with Mommy/Daddy-and-Me Yoga. Definitely a week filled with FUN!
Writing and Phonics:
This week we focused on our “op” and “ob” word family. We learnt our new words and did the “op” beginning sound worksheet. We also wrote our “op” and “ob” words in our books as well as our weekly sentences with the word family words. The children continued to write their sentences and words without our writing cats. We are really so impressed with them! The children wrote their own shopping list filled with all the things they wanted to buy.
Maths:
We completed an addition worksheet, which they did all on their own without the help of their teachers. We are so proud of them! They also learnt the concept of money as they shopped for their favourite things at our EcoShop.
Life Skills:
We spoke about ‘Being Judgmental’ and why it is so important to not judge our friends or others. We need to be accepting and understanding all the time.
We are in full swing practicing for our graduation. The excitement is definitely kicking in!
The Real Meaning of Christmas!
Please don’t forget that our 12 Days of Christmas initiative starts on Monday. Keep an eye out for the daily reminder messages of what to bring. We never really realize how fortunate we are until we see the needs of others. This initiative is an amazing way to help those who need it the most!
Nearly there people….
It is that time of year again, the crazy time where everything just gets busier and chaotic although festive. Let’s stay safe, healthy and push to the end of the year (can’t believe we are nearly there!) Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Only 3 short weeks of school left! Don’t forget to look out for the Holiday Club Registration Form coming your way soon!
Holiday Club will run from the 8th till the 17th of December.
We started off with listening to each other’s fun weekend news and interacting in a broad discussion of each other’s weekend.
We introduced this week’s theme; Space. We discussed what the solar system is and what can we see in the solar system. We discussed how many planets there are in the solar system, what they look like as well as fun facts about each planet. We watched an interesting video on astronauts taking off into space in a space rocket. We discussed that the sun is a giant star. We spoke about what the international space station is and how astronauts survive in space.
Phonics and Writing
This week we recapped on all the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. We recapped on all our ‘A’ family words that we have learnt throughout the term. The children completed a worksheet that required them to use cut out letters to write out the word of the given object. We practiced our sentence skill by writing sentences using some of our ‘A’ family words. We are so proud of how hard the children are working! We recapped on all our sight words learnt throughout the year. The children are reading their sight words amazingly!
Maths:
This week we introduced a new concept of ‘one more’ and ‘one less’. We used concrete object to practice what happens if we add 1 more or if we have 1 less that our friends. The children grasped onto this concept really well. Once they were familiar with this Maths concept, we completed ‘1 more’ and ‘1 less’ worksheets. The children were able to complete their worksheets independently and confidently. We are so proud of them!
Life Skills:
Focusing on our moral conscious theme: Keeping Promises, we discussed that when we promise something to someone we must follow through with it. We spoke about a pinky swear and we all know someone who has broken a pinky promise and it doesn’t feel nice to be let down. We explained that as young children we have to promise things that we know we can stick to. For example, we cannot promise anyone the moon because we know that that would just be totally impossible to do but that we can promise to be kind to everyone we meet!
Art:
This week it was all systems go with our space art. We started off by creating the solar system using black paper with white speckled paint. The children then coloured in the planets, their astronaut suit and drew a picture of themselves in the astronaut suit. The planets were then glued onto the black paper in the correct order from the sun and their astronaut was glued floating in space. We also drew a picture of a rocket in space and what we thought we would see in space if we were in the rocket. Finally, we drew a picture of what we would do if we ‘took the moon for a walk.’ These came are so cute and we will be keeping them for our ‘Book of Me’ project.
Communication for the next 2 weeks will be done using the class WhatsApp groups.
3rd term will begin on the 8th of September, we hope you all have a wonderful break!
Moral Conscious Theme: Smart is better than strong. Working together.
What we got up to these past two weeks:
We introduced the themes; Dinosaurs and Dinosaurs Under the Soil. We discussed what dinosaurs are and what different dinosaurs there were as well as which dinosaurs were carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. We also discussed that some dinosaurs can fly while others remained on land. We discussed what we thought happened to the dinosaurs millions of years ago that caused their extinction, it was no surprise that our clever children knew that a big meteor came down to earth and blew them all away. We discussed what fossils are and that people who study fossils are called paleontologists. We pretended we were Paleontologists and went for a nature walk to discover some fossils. The children had a lot of fun during this activity.
Phonics and Writing
During the last 2 weeks we introduced our last two ‘A’ family words; ‘at’ and ‘ap’ family words. The children identified different words that have the ‘at’ and ‘ap’ sound in them. The children then segmented the words by identifying the letter sounds in those words. Once the children were comfortable with these family words, they then completed a matching the word to the picture worksheet as well as practiced writing these words as they sounded them out. We practiced writing sentences onto our white boards and once the children were comfortable with their writing abilities they wrote the sentences into their books using the head tummy and tail. The children have impressed us so much with their handwriting abilities, we think they are ready for their thin lined books, which we will introduce from next week. We also revised all of our sight words that we have learnt so far.
Maths:
During these past two weeks we focused on number sequencing as well as identifying what number comes before and after. We completed a concrete activity using number cards on the carpet. The children had to identify what numbers were missing in the time line. Once the children were comfortable with this concept, they completed worksheets on missing numbers from 1-20 as well as from 10-1. The children also completed a fun dinosaur colour by number activity. They are colouring in beautifully!
Art:
We have had a busy two weeks constructing the most beautiful and fun art pieces. We started off by creating a Pterodactyl. We cut a paper plate in half which represented the wings and pasted different colours and patterned tissue paper onto it. We then attached the cut out body parts of the Pterodactyl to the wings. These are so cute! We made a beautiful dinosaur silhouette by painting the background of the paper in a variety of colours. We then used a dinosaur stencil made from an x-ray. The children then used a sponge to dab the paint in the cut out dinosaur stencil onto their page. We absolutely loved this art piece, which will be kept for our art expo. This week we created our own dinosaur fossil art piece. We painted the paper with coffee using a sponge to create a rock like colour. The children then drew a picture of a dinosaur fossil onto their coffee painted picture. We had so much fun creating a sensory dinosaur bath bomb with a little surprise in it. This was a lovely activity as the children were able to get their hands dirty while creating something so exciting!
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