Dear Parents,
How fast time flies and we are moving on to Term 4 of 2010! After completing the children's Term 3 Portfolio last week, I would wish to share a little personal note with you...
Every term, while I'm compiling the portfolio for the children, it serves as a time for me to reflect upon what was done through the Term. How have the children benefited through the activities and lessons conducted? Which area have they improved on and which area needs more attention in the coming term? And having been with the children close to a duration of 2 years, they have really matured. Not just in terms of appearance, but also in terms of character and general well-being. They are more aware of what is going on in school regarding lessons, school work and celebrations. They are more acceptable towards differences among friends and show ability to adapt quickly to changes.
Yes, N2 may be a rather big class with 25 little children. But because we are a big class, children get the opportunity to mix around with a wide range of children of different character, moods, likes and dislikes. They learn to adapt to one another and at the same time, share ideas, thoughts and opinions. There may be the occasional conflict among friends, but they have since learn to solve problems by trying to negotiate among themselves, or seek adults help for intervention.
Children have learnt to bond with one-another and care for each other, even without teachers reminder, forming a united N2 class. Take for example, a recent scenario, when we went to City Harvest Church for Children's Day celebration. The performance was about 2 hours. Within the 2 hours, although some wanted to visit the toilet, they were not able to do so as the toilet was quite a distance away. They managed to wait till the performance was over, before heading to the toilet. Once we reached the toilet, naturally everyone wants to go in at the same time. But teacher explained that there are some children who were really urgent and needed to use the toilet first. And the children started asking each other, "you want to go first? I can still wait for a while". As they allowed those who couldn't wait to go in first. It was such a beautiful sight to see such a self-less act coming from 4 years old, when we thought that they are only capable of fighting with their siblings and playing with toys. After going to the toilet, the taller kids even helped the shorter kids to switch on the tap as they washed their hands.
That is just one scenario among the many that has happened recently. No doubt at times it may be tiring to deal with conflicts after conflicts or constantly reminding them to behave themselves. But at the end of the day, it is truly rewarding to see the toddlers growing up into thoughtful little children. I get my rewards when they come up to me giving me a big smile and a big hug! My heart just melts and for that moment, nothing else seems to matter.
With that, I want to thank you, parents, for co-operating with us to bring the best childhood experience for the little ones. I hope that they will grow up to be an all-rounded child who is not only successful academically, but socially and emotionally as well. Without your kind understanding, we will not be able to provide them with the best learning experience with the outdoor learning trips, project and group work with your generous contribution. And we appreciate your sympathy towards little mishap or conflicts between children that happened in school. Let's continue working together to provide a fun and loving environment for the little children - and let them grow up with full of memorable childhood memories at Mulberry.
Should you have any queries regarding the portfolio or anything that you wish to clarify, feel free to give me a call at 6560 1016. Or email me at shirley@mulberrylearning.com
Happy Children's Day!
Our day of fun and joy at West Coast Park, 30th Sept, 2010.
With lots of love,
Teacher Shirley
Labels: Reflections
Love,
10:20 AM
Dear parents!
Happy belated National Day! I hope you have enjoyed your long weekend with the little ones, watching fire works, fighter jets, army trucks and singing national songs (as per what the little children shared with me when they returned back to school). Most of the girls enjoyed the colourful fireworks, while the boys enjoyed watching the fighter planes and army trucks. Some could even name the different planes for me, like F15. I can see that they had a wonderful national day!
All geared up in Red and White and ready to celebrate Singapore's 45th Birthday!
Doing the Great Singapore Work Out! and really sweating it out' in the hot sunny weather!
We are proud to be a Singaporean! And we fly our flags high! (:
Preparing for the telematch game...
Slow and steady wins the race... Look at how I can balance the ball!
---
Let me update you on the fun we had during the June Holidays! Yes, it may seem like ages ago... but take this opportunity to show the little ones and get them to recall back on their fun times and share the experience with you!
We had one of the most enjoyable field trip to Pasta Mania! We visited their head quarters and children got their hands on trying to make a pizza by rolling and pressing the dough, laying the ingredients on it and topping it with cheese! Sadly they did not get a chance to eat their own pizzas due to cleaniness issues. But instead, they had a pizza and pasta feast, included in the package! Children also enjoyed bringing home all their wonderful gifts from Pasta Mania which includes a t-shirt, balloons and their self-made pizzas.
Apart from that, another memorable school holiday programme event was the occupation week where children came in dressed as different occupations. The week ended nicely by settling up our classroom as a hair salon! Children were given an afternoon of hair styling workshop by Teacher Winnie, Teacher Shirley and Rong Lau Shi, before opening the shop to the rest of our friends on the last day of the week! The workshop included normal hair styling with water or gel, combing, clipping or even curling and straightening hairs! Some children even took on the role as hair stylist assistants or even cashiers. Not only did the children enjoy themselves, we teachers also enjoyed getting our hair styled by the children. Well, except from the time they pulled too hard and we dropped a few strands of hair. haha! But it was all in the name of good fun!
Although all the holiday fun is over, children are still having fun working on this term's project 'Home'. More updates will be coming soon... Stay tuned!
Warmest Regards,
Teacher Shirley
Labels: Festive celebrations, Holiday Programs
Love,
10:10 PM
Dear Parents! Thanks for waiting patiently for the blog updates. So... here it is!
Through the past 2 months we have celebrated both Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day. Thanks for your wonderful participation and support to make these 2 celebration a success. Most importantly, we are glad that you could take time off your busy schedule to join us in these celebrations.
Fathers' Day Celebration 2010
Thanks for your generous contribution in purchasing the little goodies and drinks during the celebration and through the rest of the week. That helped us to raise a total of S$798.30 for ACRES! (: Look at the little ones doing their bit for charity.
Father and child at the gym activity by GymKids as part of our holiday program, physical week.
Game #1: Musical Chairs for the Daddies! Back to the old-school days where these Daddies fight it out at a round of musical chair which involve some simple dance moves. Jun Han's, Denise's, Yuk Hong's and Kai Qian's Daddy battle it out! Congrats to Yuk Hong's Daddy who finally emerged as the winner after a few close battles with Kai Qian's Daddy during the final round! Good job for both the 1st and 2nd winners!
Game #2: Passing the rubber bands using the straws. This involve some serious team work between Daddy and Child. Looks like all of them are doing great! Well done to Chelsey, Samantha, Corinne, and their sporting Daddies as well!
Game #3: Feeling hungry? Be the fastest to finish this humongous 6 slices sandwich! Look at how Megan's and Teryl's struggle to finish the sandwich. Well done!
Mothers' Day Celebration 2010
The little performance by the N2 children to show their gratitude towards you, parents about looking after them from a little baby to how big they are now.
Game #1: Corinne's, Katriel's and Teryl's Mummy, participated in a dancing game and they have to come up with a short 1 min dance towards a kung-fu dance. Wow! We saw some serious kung-fu moves over there! Thank you Mummies for the great performance!
Game #2 (on left): Zander feeding his mummy milk using a milk bottle! Great job mummy for finishing the milk 1st!
Game #3 (on right): Kai Qian's mummy is blind-folded and trying to 'smell out' her little girl among 5 children. And indeed, mummy knows their little one best! She guessed it right and found Kai Qian!
Game #4: Teacher Winnie with Wei Ying. Wei Ying have to wrap Teacher Winnie up with toilet paper as a Mummy. Good try Wei Ying!
Thank you Mummies and Daddies for coming down and being a good sport during our celebrations and participating in all the games and contest! We sure hope that you enjoy yourself as much as we have! We look forward to seeing you during our celebrations next year as well! ((:
Labels: Centre Celebrations
Love,
9:44 PM
Hi Parents!
So sorry for the late updates on March Events! We have been busy the whole of the last month preparing the little ones' portfolio! We hope that you had fun looking through all the write-ups and photographs of your child! (: It was a fruitful experience for me, as a teacher to see each and every child's development through the year.
I am pleased to see children starting to be more vocal and contribute more ideas to the lessons! They have also started playing more co-operatively together and giving each other roles. For example, they start engaging in games of "Mummy, Daddy" where some would pretend to be the Mummy, some would be the Daddy and some would be the baby. Funny how they often portray Daddy as the one who drives car or watch TV! haha. It can be pretty interesting at times just listening to them exchanging dialogues during their play! Which is a vast development from last year where they would often play by themselves, rather than with friends. (:
In the month of March, the little ones went on a centre outing to the Arts house for music activities and storytelling sessions! It ended nicely with a picnic at the park!
Meeting a Peranakan Bibik who showed us some simple Peranakan dance moves. She invited some children up to dance along with her!
Watching a musical instrument performance by the performer and Teacher Mandy and Wang Lau Shi.
Children getting their hands on using the various musical instrument according to the rhythm.
Picnic by the Park along Clark Quay.
***
Just to share with you a little about weekly our swimming lessons. Our swimming instructor is: Uncle Choo. I believe your children who went swimming should have told you about him. We usually split the class into 2 groups and bring them down for about 45 minutes per session. The swimming lessons are usually conducted at the big pool. Occasionally we would let them have free water play at the mushroom pool! Children really enjoy playing at the mushroom pool!
Recently, he has been teaching the children how to blow bubbles in the water, kick water and jumping in the water (while he catch them when they jump). This helps to encourage water confidence and getting them to be used to having their head submerged in the water for a brief moment.
Practicing our kicking while waiting for our turn to get into the water...
Jumping into the water with no fear and all smiles!
1,2,3... blow bubbles!
Yeah! We love swimming! ((:Till then, will update again! Let me know if there's anything that needs to be improved on. ;) Have a relaxing and enjoyable weekend!
Warmest Regards,
Teacher Shirley
Labels: Field Trips, March Newsletter, Swimming
Love,
8:41 PM
Warmest greetings to all the Mummies and Daddies!
Our N2 children had a fun filled February learning about the various way to keep us healthy! They were engaged in plenty of cookery activities to prepare dishes like fruity yogurt, cheese letter bread and veggy shroomy soup. I hope that you enjoyed the veggy shroomy soup (that the children brought back) as much as they did in school!
Look at some of the pictures taken during the recent fruity yogurt activity:
First, we have to cut the fruits (strawberry and kiwi) into small pieces...
Next, we add the plain non-fat yogurt into the blender... Let's count the number of scoops to add...
Add the fruits in!
Watch the blender do the job! Children were fascinated with how the blender works... look at how some of them are covering their ears as they were afraid of the loud sound made by the blender. "brrrooooooooommmm" - yumyum!
***
Apart from all these in-class activity, children expanded their knowledge through a field trip to the Health Promotional Board - Health Zone on 19th February, Friday.
While waiting to go into the Healthzone...
At the Exciting Eatery where children enjoyed looking at the giant food pyramid behind them... it is filled with plenty of different models of food.
Real-life model of people as part of the exhibit showcasing healthy food meals... Chelsey was wondering if those models were real or fake people. Some children were even afraid to go near the model as they said it looked scary...
At the Tooth Terrain, there was a huge model of a mouth! It was fun stepping on the soft 'tongue' and exploring the huge mouth!
Children checking out the decayed tooth in the mouth and learnt about the various kinds of unhealthy food that causes tooth decay.
We were also offered free service to check our mouth by Rong Lau Shi at one of the exhibits. Children had fun taking turns sitting on the dental chair. We also managed to convince some of the children who were afraid to sit on the chair and open their mouth wide... hopefully this will help them to take away the fear from visiting the dentist!
It was definitely a fun and knowledgable experience for the children and myself. I hope that your child did share with you about some of the things we saw during the field trip. I'm currently looking forward to our next field trip to The Arts House for Child Size, A Festival for Young Ones next Tuesday, 9th March! ((:
Till then, have a great enjoyable month ahead!
Labels: February Newsletter, Field Trips, Project
Love,
2:11 PM
Hello Mummies and Daddies!
Happy advanced Lunar New Year! As the festive season draws nearer, our N2 children spent most of the circle time the past 2 weeks listening to various New Year songs and learning how to say New Year greetings like: Gong Xi Fa Cai, Xin Nian Quai Le. They also learnt about the different cultural dance often seen during the New Year such as Lion Dance and Dragon Dance.
Besides that, Rong Lau Shi have been engaging them in doing interesting Chinese New Year craft work. We would let them bring home the New Year decorations on Friday. You may support them by hanging their decorations around the house!
Look at the children at work!
Everyone wants to try being the "Lion"!
Can you guess who is pretending to be the lion?
***
By the way, some parents was asking me about the "Healthy Food song". Here is the link for the song - adapted from the Fast Food Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCPSh47gHz8 We have changed the lyrics of the song a little by substituting the words:
- 'Pizza Hut' to 'Vegetables'
- 'Kentucky fried chicken' to 'Red Apple'
- 'Macdonald' to 'Fishy Fish'
All these food items and the dance actions for each item are chosen by the N2 children. You may try to get them to dance for you at home!
***
Before I pen off, let me wish all parents and families, a very happy Lunar New Year! May it be filled with plenty of love, luck, good health and prosperity! For all families who will be going abroad during the festive season, have a fun and enjoyable trip! ((:
Love,
Teacher Shirley
Labels: Festive celebrations
Love,
10:50 PM
Through the celebration, we played a few games using the recycled materials we have brought from home. One of the game is to build the longest line! One by one children were given a chance to place the objects on the floor to form the longest line...
Children getting their hands on using the various musical instrument according to the rhythm. 
Practicing our kicking while waiting for our turn to get into the water...
Jumping into the water with no fear and all smiles!
1,2,3... blow bubbles!
Yeah! We love swimming! ((:
