Important Notices

Happy Children’s Day!!! Philosophy for Children; Year 1 Term 1. “Philosophy begins in wonder”- Aristotle

and who wonders more about the world than kids. Our chosen picture book: Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree”. Topics covered: Friendship/ Ethics/ Environ-mental Ethics.

Field Trip to Pasir Ris Kid’s Kampong, Thrusday October 13th. Please submit pay-ment ($18) and reply slip by Tuesday, October 11th.

Center for Effective Living Camp, October 17-19th. Please contact reception to register.

Friday, October 14th is a Teacher Inset day the Academy will be closed. Term 1 Break: October 17—21st. Last session for Term 1 Taekwondo CCA will be Monday October 10th.

“ While walking to school, encourage your child to skip, hop, or gallop part of the way.”

BIWEEKLY

NEWSLETTER September 26th — October 6th , 2011

1 0 W i n s t e d t R o a d , B l o c k C # 0 1 - 1 6 , S in g a p o r e 2 2 7 9 7 7 T e l : + 6 5 6 8 3 6 1 1 2 8 F a x : + 6 5 6 2 3 5 6 7 9 7 w w w . l e a r n d i f f e r e n t . c o m .s g

Greetings from the therapy department! This month the occupational therapists would like to give you some ways to improve your child’s fine and gross motor skills that you can easily incorporate into your daily routine. Fine motor skills require using the small muscles of the hands and fingers and assist with activities such as hand-writing and completing clothing fasteners. Gross motor skills use the larger muscles in the body and assist with activities such as jumping, running, and throwing. Fine Motor Activities: Encourage your child to complete his or her own clothing fasteners independent-

ly. Depending on the difficulty of the fastener, you may need to provide some assistance.

Give your child a pair of tongs or blunt tweezers to use to eat a snack such as small crackers, grapes, or cereal.

Ask your child to manually sharpen the pencils you have at home. When you arrive at home, encourage your child to unlock the door using the key.

Or if you have a keyless entry, ask your child to unlock a cupboard or drawer. If you use twist ties or clips to keep food fresh, ask your child to put on or remove

these items. You can also encourage your child to open small containers or zip lock bags.

Gross Motor Activities: While waiting in line, see how long your child can balance on one foot. Ask your child to help carry in grocery items that are appropriate for his or her

size and strength. While walking to school, encourage your child to skip, hop, or gallop part of the

way. While cooking or baking, ask your child to help stir thickened mixtures such as

dough. When you are finished with a piece of paper, ask your child to crumple it and try

to throw it into the bin.

NOTES FROM INTEGRATED THERAPY: MOTOR SKILLS!

from features we cut out of

magazines. The boys also

drew self-portraits using

pictures of themselves for

reference. We have quite a

few aspiring artists in our

class!

We have started learning

about the importance of

The boys in Ms. Ashley's recep-

tion 2 class have been hard at

work with our "My World" IPC

unit. The children have learned

a lot about themselves and

their classmates. They have

also been working on their

personal research projects

where they share information

about themselves, their fami-

lies, and their favorite things.

We have also learned about

the famous artist Picasso and

his work with portraits. As an

activity we painted portraits

using our classmates (and

teachers) as our subjects and

then made more portraits

Page 2

We have made some great discoveries about ourselves and our friends over the past few weeks. During our ‘Knowledge Harvest’, we learnt about some similarities and differences that we have. We belong in the same learning community, same class and despite coming from different family backgrounds, reli-gions and homes, we are

able to work together in a cooperative manner. Social competence is an-other area that the stu-dents have started learn-ing about in the Society subject of the IPC unit ‘Living Together’. We now understand that we should be sensitive to oth-er people’s feelings by ob-serving the tone of their voice and facial expres-sions. We learnt about some strategies that would keep ourselves calm when we’re angry, upset, worried or excited like taking deep breaths and thinking of happy thoughts. We have also discovered some interesting facts about Singapore and the origin of the Merlion dur-ing our History class.

physical education and taking

care of our bodies with exer-

cise and a balanced diet. The

children had fun measuring

their physical skills with out-

door running, jumping and

balancing activities. We are

going to see if they can im-

prove their personal bests

later in the school year. They

also listed their favorite foods

and categorized them in the 5

food groups to see how they

can balance out or make

more nutritious food choices.

In Maths, the boys have been

tested on their knowledge of

addition and we are very

RECEPTION TWO , MS. ASHLEY ’S CLASS

YEAR ONE , MS. KATRINA’S CLASS Names of famous people, that were new to our stu-dents, were “uncovered” during our research.

These names include Sir Stamford Raffles and Lee Kuan Yew. These people were truly helpful in trans-forming Singapore to a suc-cessful country. We were amazed at how much Singa-pore has changed over the years; from a swampy island filled with trees, to a bus-tling country filled with life and prosperity. Our history research is coupled with an interview with Laoshi. Ni-

proud of their mastery of the

topic. We have now moved

on to Subtraction and are im-

pressed by how quickly they

are picking up this difficult

topic. In Literacy, we have

moved on to the "ar" and

"air" sounds and have prac-

ticed listening comprehension

skills.

Happy Children’s Day!

Cole, Marissa and Shane conducted an interview with her and are in the midst of preparing their leaflet called, “All About Singapore”. Genna, Luca, Tvish and Sean will be con-ducting their interview with Mr. Lawrence next week.

Happy Children’s

Day to everybody!

Have a restful long

weekend!

Page 3

RECEPTION TWO , MS. KARINA’S CLASS

RECEPTION ONE , MS. GETTY ’S CLASS

our pictures on the projector

screen and painted our self-

portraits. The students also

learnt about different famous

painters and sculptors and

viewed their artworks. In P.E.,

the children performed activi-

ties and movements with con-

trol and coordination such as

hopping on one foot, skipping

rope, throwing and catching a

ball etc. Although we some-

times stumbled and fell down,

we all had a blast and pushed

ourselves forward.

In Literacy, the children have

been working very hard in im-

proving their spelling. Every

morning after unpacking their

bags we always have a warm

are very good at many things (they mentioned “mum and dad” as ones of the few peo-ple who are good at many things). We need people to be different. Coming from different families, we also learnt that we inherit differ-ent characteristics as well.

Other than characteristics, the children also learnt that different families have differ-ent preference for food too. Relating this fact with sci-ence, we learnt how to cate-gorize foods. They children watched a short clip on the Food Pyramid and completed

As we ventured deeper into

the theme "My World", the

children began to discover

more about their families and

themselves as well. Each of

them compared the number

of members in their family

with the families of their

classmates. They learnt more

about their history when they

shared about their family's

traditions, religious belief,

country of origin and some

other family backgrounds. We

also used the globe to try to

find the countries in which

our grandparents came from;

we even drew a map. In Art,

we viewed ourselves through

our own eyes when we traced

For the past two weeks, the children have been exploring what they like about them-selves and what they are good at doing. They also came up with what they enjoy doing with their family and friends. Don’t be surprised if Angry Birds outnumbered other toys that they enjoy playing with. Emphasizing the positive as-pects of our view of ourselves, we tried to find out what we are very good at and what we still need help with. We con-ducted some experiments both indoor and outdoor to know how fast we hop, jump, and run from one spot to another and how good we catch a ball with two hands or with one hand. We logged results and compared them with one an-other. We’ve learnt that it is impossible to be good at every thing. Only a few people are

a warm-up by doing spelling

before anything else, how cool

is that?! The first group has

been mastering their graph-

emes, blending and seg-

menting words on the green

wall as well. While the other

group is making all efforts in

improving their reading and

forming their own sentences.

In Maths, we are done with

number bonds and are now

moving on to Addition. We are

learning how to add up two

single digit numbers by draw-

ing concrete examples of each

number and counting them all

up to find the sum. A little

"sweet tooth" experience also

helped us in Addition when we

completed their own food pyramids by cutting pictures of healthy food from the magazines.

In Literacy, the older chil-dren learnt about common and proper nouns. They spied with their little eyes nouns around the school and classified them into com-mon and proper nouns. The “Rainbow of Nouns” that they made is proof that nouns are everywhere in our lives. The younger children learnt the words with graph-eme /-ou/ and created their poems using /-ou/ word cards. They did an OUtstand-ing job! In Maths, both groups were reviewing the use of numbers in our lives through addition, subtraction and number bonds. They came up with

their own addition stories and solved vertical addi-tion/ subtraction prob-lems independently.

This week has ended in a very unforgettable way as we celebrated Children’s Day. We played games, sang songs and watched movie.

Happy Children’s Day!

practiced solving addition

problems using "Skittles" as

our examples. The children

did a wonderful job so we

turned it into a celebration

of colours and fruity taste in

our mouths.

Rainbow claps for eve-

ryone for a job well

done!!!

Happy Children’s Day!

Every child deserves the right to be taught in the way he or she learns best!