Art and reading

Every year the Knysna Arts group holds a Children's Art Exhibition at the Old Gaol. I t is an annual event in our town and all schools participate. I was most proud of JT in my class who received a "Highly Commended" for  his little car. Well done JT!

This week I was happy to observe my kids having a renewed interest in reading. Could it be that I re-arranged the book corner, bought a new mat and hauled out some little stools to sit upon???

It matters not why but rather that it is happening!!! YAY!!!

The Grade Two's proudly showing off their poems for Arbor Day to the rest of the school at assembly.

Helicopter!

On Thursday the 15th August a rather large helicopter landed on the sports fields across the road from our school. As we are doing the transportation theme this term it was a perfect opportunity to see a helicopter up close! We were given the opportunity to inspect the craft and ask the pilot questions. The reason for all this excitement is that a tanker had run aground off our shoreline and the helicopter was there to take the Minister of Environment Mr. Winde to inspect the scene. A number of birds had been caught in the oil spill and people were doing a great job rescuing them while every effort was being made to re-float the stricken vessel. I am happy to report it was successfully removed on Saturday.
The children were amazed at the size of and equipment on the helicopter. An amazing opportunity for our children!

Mandela Day and Birthday - all in one week!

On Thursday 18 July we celebrated Mandela's Birthday with an assembly where we sang Happy Birthday, prayed for him , sang the National Anthem and read a short version of his life. The children all brought coins and arranged them around a sketch of him that I made. The money was for charity and we raised R518 for a local soup kitchen which provides meals for the hungry people of our town.My children also wrote a simple message to him wishing him well and happiness for his Birthday - these were so sweet!

On Friday 19 July Stepping Stones School turned 37 years old and again we celebrated with songs and a beautiful Birthday Cake!

The Elephant is our school's logo hence the cake had to have an elephant's head on it!

A wonderful week of celebrations - Well done Stepping Stones!

MIA - Highlights of the last few months.

I cannot believe it was February when I last blogged - where has the time gone?
Highlight for March was definitely a cruise on the Opera to Namibia - what a beautiful country!

This was followed by our school's annual Ellie Fair - a fun day of food, games and lots of work for staff and parents but most enjoyable!

We then had a "What I want to be when I grow up" day. It was heartening to see how many kids want to be teachers!

Term 2's highlights included our music day with Sue Fawset who taught us so much about musical instruments in 1 hour that the kids were spellbound.

We also had our annual South African Braai for South Africa Day. Hard work but lots of fun!

The childre made and presented their first project - a weather measuring device which had to be made from recycled materials and they did themselves proud!

Well I certainly hope that quick catch up will get me motivated to keep more up to date!

I'm off to do some scrapbook work now!

A week of love and sports!

This week was Valentine's day and one of our Mums sent us some yummy cakes ( such a pity I am on diet but the kids did enjoy!)

On Friday we had our annual 'Sports Day" athletics meeting. The children ran, jumped and did novelty races. A fun day enjoyed by all!

Well I'm off on a cruise to Namibia next week so I am leaving my littlies with a relief teacher. Fingers crossed that all goes well!

Wetlands Poster

Febuary 2nd was world wetlands day and as we are working to retain out platinum status as an Eco school we all worked on Wetlands posters - each class concentrating on a different aspect. We were given the task of threats to our wetlands. I drew a simple 'wetland' background which the children coloured and illustrated. We then looked for pictures of threats to the wetlands having decided on 6 specific threats - people, pollution, toxins, floods, droughts, daming up the water. We pasted these on large 'maginfying glasses' - not a bad result!

We were also luck enough to be visited by a toad brought along by one of the Mums who work for the San Parks. She gave us a lot of information about frogs and toads and we were all facinated ( some of us were rather fearful too!)

A good week! We even had a lovely laugh: Teacher asked how we thought we could stop the destruction and harm done by a bulldozer ( one of the kids drew a picture of one for our poster). One little voice piped up; "You switch it off with a key!"
Oh the wisdom of children!!!!

Where has the time gone?

Wow it's been nearly 2 months since my last post and much has happened. We had our annual Christmas Concert and prize giving. We had a lovely Christmas vacation of 3 weeks. Lovely hot weather, a visit from the American family and myd her brother and partner. The weeks just flew by and sooo it was back to school time!

I decided to go with a superhero theme this year and thanks to twinkl and all those lovely teachers that pin on pinterest I have some lovely charts and desk labels.I made the superheroes to look like my children and put each child's initials on the round label in the front so they all had to find which one they were.
We are now into week three and I cannot believe how little the children read - is it that they are lazy? the work is too advanced? or have they just not been taught how to read instructions? So this week I am concentrating on making them READ instructions not listen to Instructions - Lots of anchor charts are the order of the day!I will let you know how it goes!
Reading other blogs I noticed a lot of 100 day activities - still so far away for us!