Ushering the New Year

To usher in the new year, we have been redesigning our classroom environment! Here are some photos of the Nursery Class, it is still a work in progress. We can't wait for the New Year! 

Year End Event (2019)

This year has been pretty special to me. While I did participate in Year-End Event before, I found this year’s event the more meaningful of them all. Of course, this bunch of children has been the dearest to me, being with them since they were toddlers! We held a two-day event – A K2 Graduation Party for the families only, and a Carnival for the entire school. To know more about the event, here is the documentation that I’ve written for this year’s event😊

We all have different gifts, so we all have different ways of saying to the world who we are - Fred Rogers

At the Cove, we take on the lens of the socio-constructivist approach where children are active participants in their learning and learning is co-constructed with the children and families through experience, routines, and interactions. Through the process of Year-End Event, children are facilitated to think of their own ideas and beliefs before listening and communicating with others. As we kick-start the planning process of Year-End Event, we posed questions to our children for them to be aware of their needs and interests – What are you good at? What is the class comfortable in doing? It was an experience that invited our children to identify and reflect on their own ideas and opinions. As a class, we shortlisted possibilities that we would like to pursue such as games, art, and food. Their responses were that a Year-End Event is “about growing up”, “about being happy”, “a celebration for us”, “showing others what we can do”.  Their responses tell us that the event is a joyous occasion to celebrate as well as to showcase. They also talked about how the event is to for us to “say bye-bye”, and “to say thank you to all our friends and teachers”. Finally, they also talked about it being an event to make daddy and mummy proud.

Why are we having a Carnival? What are the values of our Carnival?

We teach who we are - John Gardner

The teachers went on to think about what some learning dispositions are we want to infuse in the process. We would like to provide opportunities for children to invent, innovate and imagine, to collaborate and be compassionate, to celebrate and enjoy. We want to help children see the possibilities of a Carnival to embed their interest in Game, Food, and Art alongside with these learning dispositions. Further, the possibilities of having a Carnival allow children to apply their structured skills to strength the emergent project. The planning process allows for play and interaction experiences, which act as vehicles for learning and opportunities for authentic assessment. For example, poster-making, writing, reading, and measuring.

What are our plans? How did we do it?

Beyond just games, art and food, the class teachers deepen the concepts with two key learning points in the English Curriculum. The concept of the Ugly Food, a K1 Emergent Project, and our ABC Book, a K2 Literacy Project, was included in the repertoire of ideas.

Our plans with Ugly Food Booth – Presenting our children’s voices

At the initial stage of our Ugly Food Booth, We looked at the planning process we need to make this idea to fruition. Our children recalled Aunty Wendy, a Singapore Food Rescue Volunteer, who shared about Ugly Food and though the food looks ugly, it tastes the same as the others. Thus, we wrote to the Singapore Food Rescue to ask for carrots, potatoes, and fruits that no one wants, so we can make carrot cake, mashed potato and fruit juice to sell. Though the Singapore Food Rescue was not able to contribute and commit with us, we managed to work with the Singapore Ugly Food Rescue on our mini-project. The Singapore Ugly Food visited our classroom and took this opportunity to review the recipes our children had created while sharing about edible and non-edible ugly food! With our edited recipes, we experimented with the flavors in school with our friends and teachers. We, then, invited all our families to help to design the recipes that will be put up on display at the Carnival.

In the last few weeks leading up to the Carnival, we shortlisted the materials (e.g. signboard, tables, bins) and equipment (e.g. juicer, blender) we need for our Ugly Food Booth. As a class, we considered where would be an ideal location to host our booth. After thoughtful discussion, consideration of needs of younger children, scouting of venue around the school, our friends decided to host our booth at the outdoor area, behind the blue house. The location was chosen as it has hand-washing basins, electrical power points, and sufficient space to place our fruits and signage. Based on their layout plan, they worked together to draw and describe the positioning of the materials and equipment (e.g. in front of, next, behind, besides) within the space. We went on to use play dough to make our plans into three-dimensional artwork to check if the layout was possible as well. 

Our plans with our ABC Book – Presenting our children’s thinking

Lively intellectual curiosities turn the world into an exciting laboratory and keep one ever a learner – Lucy Mitchell

Considering our children’s strong interest in books, we have been embarking on a few authors’ studies to help us identify the different writing styles and illustrations. We went on to read and explore more writing styles by Shel Silverstein. Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl. As we continue to explore the different types of writing styles, we were inspired by Oliver Jeffers’ writing style in “Once Upon an Alphabet” – when the beginning letter helps starts the story. In the process, our children shared, “A is for Aunty Susan, she cooks for us every day”, “A is also for Aunty Wendy, who teaches us about Ugly food”, “B is for Butterfly, for taking care of it and setting it free”. It was a meaningful process as we contribute to our most significant moments in our preschool years in an alphabetical manner. In the process, we faced a huge challenge in finding words that comes up with X, Y, Z – it took us four weeks to come up with the ideal words but we did not give up. We went on to write, illustrate, edit and finally publish it.

Our plans with our Graduating Performance – Presenting our children’s repertoire of movements ideas

As we inched closer to our Graduation Party, we observed how our children are exhibiting different movement repertoire through the different children’s songs. We saw them engaged in different levels (high, low, and middle), speed (fast and slow) and direction (forward, backward, sideways). Hence, we introduced an empowering lyrical song to our children – “Roar” by Katy Perry and invited them to use their movement to represent ideas they have. Our children shared that the song is a hopeful reminder on being ourselves, to stand up whenever we fall down and be fearless in overcoming obstacles.

Teachers’ Reflection: Who are they? What have we achieved thus far?

As their teachers, we understand their individual temperament and traits and it got us thinking about how we should facilitate them in the process of planning and carrying it out. We noticed that our children have many great ideas, but they do not follow through their plan. We quickly identified that our children need to know how to make good decisions and follow a plan, albeit a poor plan. Hence, we were excited to use the idea of a Carnival to help facilitate them to plan, decide and improve on their work. They learn that work takes time and hard work pays off. Most importantly, they show their sense of inventiveness and perseverance in their work. Beyond just contented faces, it was gratifying to support our children in making their ideas into realities.