Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

THEME

Dinosaurs 

COLOUR

Green

SHAPE

Triangle/Cone/Sphere

NUMBER

Recap

j

LETTER

Dd – Day

What an exciting two weeks we have had, with a super awesome theme to get everyone even more excited!! Because who doesn’t love Dinosaurs!?! These Busy Bugs have non-stop stomped and roared their way through the classrooms and we have loved every second of it!   

It is so incredible to hear how much these little people know about dinosaurs and it’s even more incredible to hear them perfectly pronounce some of the incredibly challenging dinosaur names! We have spoken about Herbivores and Carnivores, as well as all of the “basic” dinosaurs like T-Rex, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Velociraptors, Pterodactyl and Brontosaurus. We have also delved a little deeper into the lesser known dinosaurs such as the Mosasaurus (who looks like a very big whale with huge teeth!), the Ankylosaurs (this dino had a spiky, almost turtle like shell on his back and spikes on his tail) and even the Pachycephalosaurus (packy-sefa-lo-saurus)- just in case you were wondering how to say that giant word 😉 who had a giant “egg” shaped bubble on his head that was thought to be used to ram into things such as trees and bigger dinosaurs. We have loved watching the Bugs reactions to these incredible, extinct creatures and how they absorb everything that is said to them. We also learned all about fossils, how they are formed and who the people who dig them up and study them are, another very big word, Palaeontologist.   

We did a Dino dig expedition by taking a trip to the sandpit and everyone had a chance to dig and uncover buried dinosaur bones. How exciting!?   

The Bugs took our Dinosaur toys outside to “explore” our playground. The Dinosaur (and the Bugs) had so much sliding, munching on the trees, visit the Happy Hoppers classroom and jumping off of the tyres.   

For our art activities over these 2 weeks, the Bugs used our Dinosaur toys, dipped their feet in paint and let them “walk” all over their page.   

We used lego block to stamp “scales” onto dino outlines. 

We also made another exciting Dino art piece, but we are keeping those safe for art expo!  

We danced around to Dinosaur Stomp, Baby T-Rex and Walk The Dinosaur, as well as watched a few clips from the Jurassic Park/World movies (don’t worry, all the clips were age appropriate).  

We can’t believe Term 2 is over! We have loved every minute with these Bugs and can’t wait for the holidays to be over so we can get back to having fun!   

Have a wonderful holiday folks!

    

 Dates to Diarise:

9 August: Public Holiday (National Women’s Day)

12 August: Holiday Club Starts

2 Sept: Holiday Club Ends

3 Sept: Staff Return To School

4 Sept: First Day of Term 3!

6 Sept: Haircut Day

9 Sept: School Photographs

10 Sept: School Photographs

11 Sept: School Photographs

20 Sept: Hat Parade Day

23 Sept: School Holiday

24 Sept: Public Holiday (Heritage Day)

 

Lots of love

Teacher Gemma, Teacher Ash and the Busy Bugs Assistants 

Our Bugs!

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

THEME

Dinosaurs 

COLOUR

Green

SHAPE

Triangle/Cone/Sphere

NUMBER

Recap

j

LETTER

Dd – Day

IB Principle: Risk Takers – We explained to the Squad that being a risk taker is like being a brave adventurer! It means trying new things, even if they might not work out. When you take risks, you learn and grow, and sometimes you discover amazing things about yourself and the world around you. Imagine if you never tried riding a bike or swimming because you were afraid of falling or getting wet? You would miss out on so much fun! Taking risks helps you build confidence, make new friends, and find new passions. It’s okay to make mistakes – that’s how we learn! So, don’t be afraid to take a chance, try something new, and see where it takes you. You might just discover something amazing! 

 Writing and Phonics: The squad has made fantastic progress over the past two weeks, focusing on the ‘ap’ word family. They demonstrated their understanding by tracing words that end with the ‘ap’ sound, matching words to corresponding pictures, and writing sentences in their workbooks using these words. It’s impressive to see how their handwriting skills have improved, with noticeable advancements in letter formation and finger spacing. They’re also showing a great understanding of word structure such as placing them in the correct part of the “cats”. Keep up the excellent work, squad! 

Mathematics: Last week we completed subtraction sums up to 20, and we were impressed to see the class grasp the concept so well – they should be proud of themselves! We also practiced counting in multiples of 2, 5, and 10. Please continue to reinforce this skill at home. This week, we worked on a worksheet where the Squad had to identify missing numbers in a sequence, focusing on the numbers that come before and after a given number. 

Creative Art: Last week in art, the Squad made their own Dinosaur portraits, they made their own backgrounds followed by sponge painting their dinosaurs’ using stencils. This week the Squad made Dinosaur fossils using salt dough and painted them beautifully. 

Wishing you all a lovely Holiday and keep safe.  

Have a wonderful holiday folks!

    

 Dates to Diarise:

9 August: Public Holiday (National Women’s Day)

12 August: Holiday Club Starts

2 Sept: Holiday Club Ends

3 Sept: Staff Return To School

4 Sept: First Day of Term 3!

6 Sept: Haircut Day

9 Sept: School Photographs

10 Sept: School Photographs

11 Sept: School Photographs

20 Sept: Hat Parade Day

23 Sept: School Holiday

24 Sept: Public Holiday (Heritage Day)

 

Lots of love

Teacher Carla, Teacher Hayley and the Smart Squad Assistants 

Our Squad!

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

THEME

Dinosaurs 

COLOUR

Green

SHAPE

Triangle/Cone/Sphere

NUMBER

Recap

j

LETTER

Dd – Day

What a busy week we have had learning about Dinosaurs! There are just so many activities to do and things to be learnt. 

Teacher Tegan has done a daily A-Z on Dinosaur names. Each day we have learnt 3 more letters of Dinosaur names going in alphabetic order. Learning these Dinosaurs’ long names is a fun and tricky task. Let’s see how many they can remember: 

Allosaurus, Baryonyx,Coelophysis, Diplodocus, Euoplocephalus, Fabrosaurus, Gravitholus, Hadrosaurus, Iguanodon, Janenschia, Kentrosaurus, Leptoceratops, Macroplata, Nodosaurus, Ouranosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Quetzalcoatlus, Riojasaurus, Stenonychosaurus, Tricerarops, Ultrasaurus, Velociraptor, Wannanosaurus, Xenotarsosaurus, Yingshanosaurus and the Zephyrosaurus. 

We have also read a cute little novel called ‘Dino Club’ where each day we read a few chapters of the book for the Crew, Characters Jamie and Tess have an app on their tablet where they can chat to all the children around the world about Dinosaurs. Jamie finds Tess on this app and they get together to go on a Dino adventure! Venturing down into a cave where they discover a whole different world of Dinosaurs down there.  

The Crew just loved this little novel! 

Amongst the many different activities we have completed this week, we did a fossil like Pterodactyl made out of pasta. The Crew had to copy the example, planning where to glue next and how many pieces of pasta they would need. It came out really beautifully. 

A fun little activity we did that included an outing around the school, we created dinosaur skins through a cut out brontosaurus. We walked around and each Crew member had to look around to see what background would make a pretty skin for their brontosaurus. The Crew had lots of fun with this activity and the pictures came out so beautifully! 

We have also complete a few different worksheets this week, Line tracing, perceptual work sheet that consisted of colouring cutting out and pasting back together. Number tracing 1-10, matching pictures to the letters the pictures start with and an introduction worksheet to capital letters and their small letter. All Dinosaurs themed, of course!  

We completed an eye spy activity where the Crew really had to concentrate on the work that they were doing. All these activities are about following instructions which we sometimes take for granted. It is a skill that needs to be taught. The Crew were instructed to look at the pictures coloured in and try to find them in amongst the collage of pictures below AND then they had to count how many they had found the write that number in the block below the coloured in picture. This was a challenging activity but I love to challenge my Crew that’s how they expand their minds and when we do an activity like this again they will do even better! 

We have practiced our alphabet through the Letter Challenge this past term. However I do encourage you as parents to go over the letters in the holidays. The Crew need to be able to recognition each letter, know the SOUND the letter makes and start forming the letters correctly. (Going over the letters just with their finger is a great start) 

FunFit Sports was the BEST! The Crew were introduced to a new ball skilled game, T-Ball. And they had to run to the different bases as well. It was an absolute ball LOL, pun intended. Let’s go Curious Crew, Let’s go.  

At the closing of this term we say good-bye to Lilly, who joined us for a short period of time while her and her family visited South Africa from Saudi Arabia and we also say good-bye to Kudiwanashe (Kudi) who’s family will be immigrating shortly in the new term.  

We hope you all have an amazing August holiday! Rest well and we look forward to all the exciting events that await us in the new term such as: 

  • Puzzle Challenge 
  • Art expo 
  • Mommy/Daddy and me yoga 
  • Curious Crew market day  
  • Curious Crew outing 
  • Christmas, Christmas, Christmas 
  • And Reports 

Next theme in the new term: Spring Time and Flowers 

Have a wonderful holiday folks!

    

 Dates to Diarise:

9 August: Public Holiday (National Women’s Day)

12 August: Holiday Club Starts

2 Sept: Holiday Club Ends

3 Sept: Staff Return To School

4 Sept: First Day of Term 3!

6 Sept: Haircut Day

9 Sept: School Photographs

10 Sept: School Photographs

11 Sept: School Photographs

20 Sept: Hat Parade Day

23 Sept: School Holiday

24 Sept: Public Holiday (Heritage Day)

 

Lots of love

Teacher Clarissa, Teacher Tegan and the Curious Crew Assistants 

Our Crew!

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

THEME

Dinosaurs 

COLOUR

Green

SHAPE

Triangle/Cone/Sphere

NUMBER

Recap

j

LETTER

Dd – Day

What a fun two weeks of learning all about dinosaurs! 

There was so much knowledge for our Happy Hoppers to absorb, and WOW! They did so well! 

They learnt all about the diverse types of dinosaurs … ones that used to swim and ones that used to fly, even though not all flying dinosaurs had feathers. They even remembered big words like Pterodactyl, Pterosaurs, Paleontologist and when the first fossils were discovered (over two hundred years ago!) 

We listened to some fun songs with even more information about dinosaurs. Even our worksheets were dinosaur themed! During these two weeks we concentrated on cutting skills, drawing of shapes, counting and colours. Our beautiful artwork of a dinosaur shadow will be displayed at the Art show. Our Happy Hoppers are getting so excited to show all their creativity! 

For FunFit Sports this week, Coach Trevor carried on improving our hand-eye coordination with catching and batting. Our Happy Hoppers are getting so good with this activity. 

Yoga Day was all about dinosaurs too!

We marched and stomped, roared, rolled around in happy baby pose and calmed our breath like a baby Dinosaur. 

Ending off with a sequence of tree, cat, cow, dog, snake poses. 

Enjoy the well-deserved break! It was a busy term. We can’t wait for the new adventures that lie ahead for Term 3. 

 

Have a wonderful holiday folks!

    

 Dates to Diarise:

9 August: Public Holiday (National Women’s Day)

12 August: Holiday Club Starts

2 Sept: Holiday Club Ends

3 Sept: Staff Return To School

4 Sept: First Day of Term 3!

6 Sept: Haircut Day

9 Sept: School Photographs

10 Sept: School Photographs

11 Sept: School Photographs

20 Sept: Hat Parade Day

23 Sept: School Holiday

24 Sept: Public Holiday (Heritage Day)

 

Lots of love

Teacher C, Teacher Yolandie and the Happy Hoppers Assistants 

Our Hoppers!

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

Dinosaurs – Under the Soil

THEME

Dinosaurs 

COLOUR

Green

SHAPE

Triangle/Cone/Sphere

NUMBER

Recap

j

LETTER

Dd – Day

These past two weeks always land up being very WILD and LOUD! Raaaawrrrrr!!!!  

 A huge favourite amongst our boys and girls. We have had so much fun exploring the magical world of dinosaurs these two past weeks. 

It is amazing how much the Pups already know about these amazing, legendary and extinct creatures… what IS IT about DINOSAURS?!  

We spoke about all sorts of dinosaurs and we were extremely impressed with the pronunciation of these little people. Some Pups could say Brachiosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Pterodactyl, Triceratops… the list goes on! We learnt that some dinosaurs were soooo big and others were a lot smaller. Some had feathers and some had scales! Some could fly, some could swim, some walked on two legs and had tiny little arms, and some walked on four legs and had really big feet like an elephant! Some had exceptionally long, sharp, scary teeth and they ate meat! We call them carnivores! Others had smaller teeth and ate plants, and they are called herbivores! We don’t know exactly what the dinosaurs looked like, but we think they looked something like lizards do now!   

So, when we painted our dinosaur art this week, we made sure to make it very colourful! Oh, what FUN we had!We made a special surprise dinosaur which you will see at our art show. We also made some fun dinosaur facemasks which the Pups were able to take home and show Mom and Dad how well the can STOMP, STOMP,STOMP!. The Pups loved our sensory activity.  

We added sand to our messy play table and hid some dinosaur eggs and allowed the Pups to use a paint brush to clean the eggs and collect all the different dinosaurs, it obviously didn’t end there because we added big dinosaurs in the sand, and all of the Pups just went CRAZY when they saw all the dinosaurs around them.  

We have had a fantastic two weeks, but we can tell the children are tired, sick of winter and in need of a break, and Teacher Net too! Hee Hee!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and see you all soon! 

 

 

Have a wonderful holiday folks!

    

 Dates to Diarise:

9 August: Public Holiday (National Women’s Day)

12 August: Holiday Club Starts

2 Sept: Holiday Club Ends

3 Sept: Staff Return To School

4 Sept: First Day of Term 3!

6 Sept: Haircut Day

9 Sept: School Photographs

10 Sept: School Photographs

11 Sept: School Photographs

20 Sept: Hat Parade Day

23 Sept: School Holiday

24 Sept: Public Holiday (Heritage Day)

 

Lots of love

Teacher Monette and the Playful Pups Assistants 

Our Pups!