Halloween

What must be mine and Henrys' favourite time of the year Halloween ! I love doing Halloween in class because I know that here in Argentina they dont really celebrate it but my ex pat kids love the chance to create scary stuff. We painted little flower pots orange and drew on scary faces, inside I put a tea candle so the children could have their own pumpkin lantern. We made hanging pumkins with crate paper which when hung up in the window seem to shin light. With old toilet rolls we made bats and added little faces.

I did not have a chance to add photos from last week so here was one of our fruit faces. Also to let you know we have been working a great deal with letters these past few weeks. I have the children order the letters of the alphabet using large flash cards. Then I have a picture starting with each sound that they have to place on top of each letter. These association games are good and easy to do whole class and gets the children to think more about sounds and letters.

Robots

We had great fun making Robots last week, I also used it as an opportunity to teach the children about Shapes. We drew a big robot with the children choosing which shape should be used for each body part. They then cut out shapes to put together to make their own robot. To finish off we used lots of recycled bits to make 3D robots. An old box was covered with tin foil and bubble rap, then faces and arms where added on.

Exotic Animals

Animals always leaves you with many great art projects to work on. I started the class having the children match up the first letter of an animal with its picture. The children mostly recognise the letters from their own names but are slowly able to sound out a few more. We then used toilet rolls to make tall giraffes [ http://dltk-kids.com/animals/mgiraffe.html] and cut round animal templates to make a jungle collage.

Planets

Looking at Planets is great fun as its something children are always fascinated with. We started the class seeing which planets the children knew, Earth and Mars seem to be the two they always remember. We looked at the rest counted how many there are then put them in order from the sun recognising the smallest and biggest ones. After ordering and labelling their Planets the children painted a big Earth and hung an astronaut and space ship off it to make a mobile hanger. We finished making a Space picture with rockets and stars, lots of glitter and shiny paper.

Up in the Sky

With lovely sunny spring days upon us I thought it would be nice to stare up at the endless blue skies and see what is up there. So this week we looked at 'things in the sky' , the children told me everything they had seen in the sky, clouds, stars, rain, kites, .... which we drew and labelled on the big white board. The children then coloured, cut stuck and label the different things. We then used some of our recycled boxes to make planes and finished off making kite in the sky with cotton wool clouds. [ http://www.dltk-teach.com/alphabuddies/mkite.html]

Welcome to two new students Elizabeth and Michael ;]

New term Spring Time

It was so nice to finally get back to Buenos Aires to the sunshine and my beautiful home. I have managed to avoid winter once again and arrive just in time for the start of Spring. This is why I thought a Spring time topic would work well to make the kids aware of the changing seasons. We looked out of the window and discussed what changes we can see in nature and how each season has different things to look out for. I had the children label different parts of a tree to work on letter recognition. We then made our own standing trees and used crate paper to make giant flowers. It was so great to have all the children back and I am so looking forward to this last term.

Married !

So after having left you all for the Argentine winter I can happerly confirm that me and Jose did finaly marry in Tuscany this August. Now reality slowly seeps back and I will be returning to Buenos Aires to start classes the week of September 12th.

Looking forward to seeing all the children again and some new faces I hope !