Mei Home at the farm

The whole school on planting day.

When told we were going on a farm trip I thought we were going to visit animals. This alas was n0t the case instead we planted cabbage seeds and radishes. At the time it seemed a pointless activity as there was no pre learning or explanation as to what was happening. (on the way in the van I was asking the kids what animals they were looking forward to seeing! # teaching in Korea #never being told anything).

Anyway it all made sense when I was told just last week that we were going back to the farm to harvest our crops which we would then make into kimchi.#If only I had known this from the beginning.

So one sunny July morning we set out to the farm…

First we dug up some sweet potatoes.

Then we planted some cabbage seeds.

On one cold, foggy autumn  morning in November we went back to pick our cabbages and they were huge!

Love my boys, I told them to make a silly face. Bad teacher Sam always trying to make the kids have fun!!!!!

Oh there is a long story behind the dirty boots drama!

Will let you know when we make our kimchi nom nom nom xx

Halloween Party Gangnam Style

On the last Friday of every month we take a whole day off class to celebrate with some sort of party. October’s party was based on the theme of Halloween and was such a blast for the children and teachers alike! A whole day of crafts, games, singing, dancing and eating candy is way up my alley

The Whole school!

The teachers – ballet, musical english and pe teacher absent

First me made Jack O Lantern baskets so that we could carry all the candy we find on our treat or treat treasure hunt.

The Chinese Teacher helping pirate Louis

Colouring our ghosts and scary pictures to stick on our baskets.

We took our baskets and entered the scary dragon cave that Teacher Sam made. It was very dark and there were ghosts and dragons everywhere. We had to be brave though so that we could get our candy.

Yay we did it! We got candy and a sticker on our trick or treat map!

The Dragon was scary but after he took his hat off and we saw it was Teacher Sam the dragon was really nice.

Rabbit Bang were really brave to.

Every room was really scary but we were brave so that we could get lots of candy!  The trick or treat treasure hunt was really fun.

Look at my gorgeous babies!

After lunch we played games, sung songs, had a parade and even performed Gangnam Stlye in our costumes.

The Halloween Party was so wonderful and it was great to see how much more personalities shine when they are not confined to a table and chair for 6 hours a day. It is days like this when I go home happy.

Books my babies love

I choose this book to read this week because of the great expressions that the girl Trixie displays. I really liked the story but have been overwhelmed at how much my babys love it. We have a class bunny rabbit toy and I see them pick him up and embrace him tightly and whisper “I love knuffle bunny” They are mimicking my reading of the book it is soooo cute.

Merging expressive cartoon network-esque illustrations with beautiful black and white photographs of Brooklyn, this funny story tells how Trixie and Knuffle Bunny’s trip to the laundromat with Dad goes terribly wrong when Trixie realizes some bunny’s been left behind…! Her attempts to alert Dad all the way home are unsuccessful, until Mum points out that Knuffle Bunny is missing and the family hotfoot it back to the laundromat. Fortunately, KB is safe, if a little wet.. (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/490867.Knuffle_Bunny)

Oh I just love the internet just found Mo Willems’s website which has a teachers guide , a great video and many printable resources and………. there are more knuffle bunny books! yaya

http://www.pigeonpresents.com/pals-knuffle.aspx

Free printable books

http://kinderblogger.wordpress.com/printable-books/

Just came across this great wordpress blog Mrs Spatafora’s Kindergarten Blog where she has a great selection of printable books for beginner readers.

Click below for a list of the available books

 

 

100 ways to praise a child

Loving this website and their freebies! This is handy printable for teachers and parents

http://www.speechtherapygames.com/Freebies/waystopraiseachild.pdf

Free Printable Bingo Game

I found this beautiful printable that is easy to download and print and wanted to share it with you all.

Click this link below to find it ( if you are working on google chrome it will automatically save it to your google docs which is handy

http://www.speechtherapygames.com/freebingo.htm

It is a great resource that has lesson plan ideas that can be adapted for many ages.  A board game and question answer session examples. As I was using it with four year olds I just used the bingo sheets and made sure they were all winners.

The emotions that the bingo game covers are

worried

disappointed

confused

happy

sad

scared

angry

surprised

ashamed

guilty

frustrated

tired

My four year olds have only learnt 5 of these words so I used it as an opportunity to practice our reading skills. First I would say a random emotion slowly and then write it on the board sounding out each letter.  It was amazing that just by breaking down the first 3 or so they caught onto the idea and soon could recognise the emotion just from me saying it.

I am so very proud of Frog Bang! Only started learning Englsih 8 months ago and now they can read the word disappointed!

Love you Frog Bang xx

Teaching babies about feelings

This week we are learning how to express our feelings. Teacher Sam made happy and sad peanuts.

They were all inside a little bag and we had to reach in a pull one out. We had to show everyone and then say if the peanut was happy or sad.

After we had a look we had  to put it on the matching robot card

They smelt really yummy so we used our strong fingers to crack them open

nom nom nom

To finish we sung “If your happy and you know it” and did sad faces and happy faces

We had lots of fun

Love Bumblebee Bang

Making Rain sticks

This week our topic was the different countries of the world so I decided to focus on the rain stick originating from South America. I thought this would be a great way to integrate art, music and fine motor skills into our English lessons.

When ever I think of a new idea my first action to consult with google for inspiration. I came across a beautiful blog named “The Imagination Tree” and was immediately taken by its heading “creative play and learning for kids”

There was a beautiful posting from 2011 on making Rain Sticks

http://www.theimaginationtree.com/2011/02/diy-rain-stick.html

So with this image in mind and the fantastic steps provided I set out to plan my lesson

The first step was to find some long cardboard tubes ( fortunately I had these from my Halloween sign posts I had made). I decided to close one end off before the lesson so that we could decorate and fill the rain sticks without to much hassle. The best way was to use a hot glue gun and let them dry over night so that in the morning all I needed to do was use a craft knife to cut the cardboard into the circle shape.

Just before the lesson I cut up different colours of contact paper and made these stickers with the formtec computer programme (again inspiration from http://www.theimaginationtree.com/2011/02/diy-rain-stick.html). I also had my stash of stickers that i have collected over the year. As this was only a 30 minute lesson with 3 year olds I had to keep it quite simple. I would love to do this with older children and get them to draw patterns based on the South American Art Work.

So lets get started Rabbit Bang…

After an introduction to the topic we started our decoration. Focusing on the children s fine motor skills we slowly pealed the backing off the stickers and said what colour we were about to stick on the cardboard.

We had to make sure that all the brown cardboard was covered up and to smooth the stickers down as best we could so that there were no bumps.

When we had used up all the coloured stickers we were able to move onto the animal prints. If we could say what colour and guess what animal they were from we could use these stickers too.

We had to make sure to peel them off the paper carefully and spread them out nicely.

When we had used all the stickers we could finish decorating with Teacher Sams special stickers.

We had a lot of fun

We then poured a combination of black beans and rice into the sticks and then Teacher Sam glued a lid on.

Our completed rain sticks

After, we played with our rain sticks and used to to beat to the drum of the music. It was fun

Rabbit Bang

Cuteness

When ever my babies have a boo boo  I blow on their ouchie and they soon forget about their tiny scratch or b ump.  Today this back fired on me in the cutest way.  We were all sitting around having lunch and I was unusually quiet as I had a splitting head ache.  Karen the cutie in the photo said “teacher Sam eye are?  (The baby Korean way of saying does it hurt?) I said “yes Karen my head is sore.” She stood up and blew on my face which was really nice except that she had a mouth full of rice and kimchi . She realised what she had done and gave me the biggest hug and kiss on the check again spraying food all over my face.  It made me laugh so hard and I just love how caring my kids are. 

Printable world maps

http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/program/nat-geo-mapmaker-kits/?ar_a=1

Just came across the education section of the national geographic website. A great resource for teachers