Paleontologists at work

On 24th Mar, we brought the children out to our backyard on a fossil hunting.

Mar News

I hope everyone enjoyed the festivities of Chinese New Year. Thank you for your lovely comments on the teachers’ Chinese New Year window decorations. We talked about the meaning of the celebration and twelve animals in the Chinese Zodiac, We also talked about Friendship and Valentines.

We have been practicing being nice to our friends by saying please and thank you, waiting for our turn and using a soft indoor voice. For art, we did activities related to our themes: making art using sunflower seeds, Chinese fans, dragons, paintings in the lucky colours and made heart shaped cards. We then wrapped up our celebration by having a Chinese New year snack.

In Feb the children learned about Garden and our children were involved with gardening and it was rewarding to watch their interest and self-esteem grow as their gardening efforts yielded good results. Some children insisted their mums to cook the onions that they brought home.

Our exciting theme in Mar will be Dinasours which is sure going to spark children’s interest in these fascinating prehistoric creatures. We will be teaching some of the different features of dinosaurs.
o Some had bony plates on their backs or heads.
o Some dinosaurs had spikes or horns.
o Some had very long necks and tails.
o Some dinosaurs had big teeth and claws.
o Some walked on two legs, while others walked on four legs.
0 Some ate meat; others ate plants.

We will have children create their own dinosaurs using paints. When the artwork is complete, we will encourage children to name their dinosaurs after themselves (such as Gabrielosaurus or Megan rex) and introduce their creations. We will cut out paper dinosaur footprints of various sizes and let the children put them in order from smallest to largest.

We will also be going on a dinasour hunt. We are going to have a special Paleontologist Day on Wed, March 24th. Your child may dress up as Paleontologist to school that day as well as bring in other tools that a Paleontologist needs such as binoculars, hat or toy camera. On this day, we will dig up dinasour fossils from the ground and fit them together to make dinasour skeletons.

Feb News

We had a great first month of school! Our focus for the first month was for the children to become familiar with school, including meeting new friends, learning routines and transitioning. They did a really nice job.

We also introduce some basic rules to the children. In Montessori environment, there are some basic expectations we have for the children such as we tell the children “walking feet” means walk safely and calmly in the environment, “indoor voices” means use gentle voices, no yelling across the environment. We constantly remind the children not to disturb others who are working and return materials in good order to shelves. In Feb, we will continue to focus on children’s care of environment and self like rolling mat, rolling socks, put shoes/bags on the correct places and grace and courtesy.

We will start our second theme with the study of Botany by introducing the topic about Garden. Some of the learning experiences planned for the children related to gardens include :
o acting out the story of The Enormous Turnip
o preparing a section of our play yard for a garden.
o planting onions and carrots
o smelling activity of different types of herbs that could be grown in the garden
o learning that worms in soil will make it better for plants

The week of Feb 8-Feb12, we will be talking about Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year. We will also have a Chinese New Year celebration on Feb 22 when the children come back to school after the Chinese New Year break. Children are invited to wear their Chinese costumes or wear something red. Children are invited to bring in food to share too.

Jan News

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome back to school! Some children are keen to be back and to catch up with their friends and teachers. It was lovely to receive your phone calls during school holidays. We missed you too! We have 6 new children start this month. They are Careen, Kien Ting, Tiffany, Maverick, Persia and Karen. We hope you enjoy your time with us. We will be spending most of our time getting the children know each other, daily routines and exploring the environment.

Our first theme is My School. We will be discussing about what we learn at school, people that help us at school, ourselves and friends and also Chinese New Year festival that we will be celebrating next month. Some fun activities we have already planned for children include sharing information about their family as well as themselves, counting how many boys and girls friends they have, create giant puzzle together and culture table of Chinese New Year.

Reminders :
o Please be informed that our school gate will be locked at 9.10am. If you’re late, pls ring the bell and wait. Try to be punctual so as not to cause disturbance to other children and teachers. Please send your child in promptly so your child does not lose any valuable learning time at the beginning of the session.
o Please label your child’s clothing and water tumbler as they always get mixed up and go home with the wrong child.
o If your child has been sick or had diarrhoea they should not attend school for 48 hours. This is to protect everyone in the school.

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays....On behalf of LittleLand and all the teachers of LittleLand including me, would like to take this opportunity to wish all parents, children, families and friends a very Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year.

See you back to school on 4th Jan 2010!! We can't wait to be back in full force as we have many exciting activities planned for the children.

Christmas moments

We had a wonderful time during the past two weeks, with lots of stories, songs and laughs. The children are great!!

Dec News

Can you believe that the holidays are almost here already! We would like to start by saying thank you to all the parents who attended our Assembly, it was a very successful afternoon. We also want to thank all the parents who were able to attend our Parent-Teacher Meeting. It was great sharing our information with you about your child and also learning more about each child from your point of view.

We would like to welcome 2 new children to LittleLand. It has been a pleasure to know them and we look forward to working with them. As this is the end of the school year it is an ideal opportunity to recognize the teachers for their tremendous work and dedication towards the children. We watched our toddlers from saying very very little to talking non-stop, we went through with children from not able to hold pencil to writing confidently and so much more.

This past month the children have been very busy exploring many levels of their development. We had a fabulous trip to the Penang Aquarium and were very proud of the children as they were well behaved during the outing.

This month we’ll be talking about Christmas. We are really excited about what we have planned for the children in this holiday season. They have been making Christmas crafts, making Christmas hats and also learning some Christmas songs. As usual they will be performing for the other groups. I think my favourite activities are when we do Christmas themed art and crafts. Pls take note that the last day of school will be 11th Dec and we’ll see you again on 4th Jan 2010. Christmas party will be on last day of school and children are invited to dress up on this day.

Under The Sea Assembly

Sun and Rain Assembly

Well done !! Today our Early Years Group performed very well in their Sun and Rain Assembly considering the size of the audience. I'm very proud of them!!

2009 Holiday Programmes

Our Cooking Party was so popular last year and we decided to have it again for the children this year. It's an enjoyable way to introduce boys and girls aged 3-12 years to cooking. Cooking is fulfilling, cooking is fun, cooking is an art and of course it involves a lot of techniques. They learn pounding the chicken softly, smashing the tuna into bits, peeling the potatoes skin, kneading dough and wait till you see children's faces when they wait eagerly for the food to cook! That's the interesting part of it!

If you are interested, do sign up early as we only have few places left! Come on, come and cook up a storm and have loads of fun!

2009 Cooking Party