Preschool 4: Welcome to the New term

Horizon japan International School Sendai Japan

Preschool

Take a peek at our week...

We apologize for the delay in the deployment of the Preschool4 blog. This blog will be longer than most of our blogs due to it covering the first two weeks of classroom events and activities. So that means a lot of pictures.

The start of the year is always full of excitement for both teachers and students. During this time, we all focused on getting to know each other and our classroom expectations. The first two full weeks of school primarily focused on this by reviewing or learning about Horizon’s rules, becoming familiar with Preschool4 schedule and expectations, and Playing ice breaker games. This helped us have a wonderful first two weeks and aid us in creating a classroom environment where children feel safe so that they can express their ideas freely and achieve success at their own personal speed.

We are Learning…

Classroom rules and Routines:

With the help of David, from NO, DAIVD! And David goes to School by David Shannon Students learned/reviewed Horizon 5 School rules and how they apply to aspects of all school life.

1.Listen when the Teacher is Talking

2. Follow Directions Quickly

3. Respect others. Respect yourself. Respect your school.

4.Raise your hand to speak

5. Be safe. Be kind. Be honest.

Colors and Numbers: With the new term staring we visited topics such as numbers and colors to help students review them and/or learn more about them.

Through the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what

do you see by Bill Martian and Eric Carol we took a closer look at colors and their relations with objects that are the same color. Children also found the book endearing with its characters and chant.

We also reviewed and learned more about numbers and number sentences with the help of Pete the Cat and His Four Groove Buttons by James Dean. Together we sang about how Pete lost his four Groovy buttons and how to represent the lost buttons through subtraction sentences.

We also started our letter of the week program with the Letter Tt!

What’s happening next week…

After Golden week we plan to start Show and Tell and start our Inquiry into friendship. Show and tell. Every day four students will share a special item that they wish to share and also relates to the theme the classroom. This will help students become more confident in this asking and sharing things about themselves. It will also help them learn how to ask questions.

The first week will be any item the students wish to bring in.

We must stress that students only bring items on the appointed days and that said items will only be taken out during show and tell times.

Our inquiry theme

For the rest of the first term we will be focusing on the concept of “friends” and how it relates to the International Baccalaureate them “Who we are”.

Important events that happened:

Flower Viewing

Students, parents, and even teachers enjoyed playing games with one another and eating together picnic style!