Ms McClellan's Class - 2022/23

We had a fun, short week with plenty of learning and lots of excitement.

Before I begin, let me just give you this week’s homework. We’re learning about animals, habitats, and nature in IEYC. This week for homework, take a walk somewhere in nature. It could be a park, the beach, a river or lake, or even farther around the reservoir than our class’s short walks. Look and listen for any animals you may see. I know you will see some birds but do you see anything else? Feel free to take some photos and send them to mariemcclellan@hyundaiforeignschool.com for our sharing time next Friday. There is no phonics homework to send home this week as we did phonics assessments ahead of the report cards which will be going home soon.

In IEYC we continued learning about animals and nature. We learned a bit more about bears and did a hidden bear activity sheet. We also went for another walk around the reservoir and collected some rocks. We brought those back to school, washed them, painted them, and made pet rocks. With all the rocks that didn’t get turned into pets, we inspected the rocks. We were able to find “shiny rocks” which was quartz. We sorted the rocks into different piles according to attributes like size or texture.

I: Ice Cream Day – we enjoyed a cone of vanilla ice cream and sang happy birthday to Ms. M.

J: Joke Day – we tried our best to tell jokes although we’re still a little young. We made a joke colouring book!

K: King Day – The boys wore crowns and got to choose things like our hello song and numbers song.

L: Lollipop Day – We enjoyed a lollipop while reading a story.

As the Upper School was in Geoje, we had a special assembly where we learned about kindness. We talked about what it meant to be kind as a whole school and in teams we did a Kindness Bingo!

That’s it for this week. The weather this weekend looks dryer than last so be sure to enjoy it! We’ll see you Monday!

Well it was an exciting week! We began each morning with our Kindness Morning Meetings. We talked about how everyone is special and how being different is a real reason we need to be kind to each other. We practiced our kindness chant:

1, 2, 3, 4 – Kindness Counts! Let’s Count Some More!
2, 6, 8, 10 – Kindness Counts! So Count Me In!

We gave compliments to each other and we sent compliments home to our family that we drew ourselves.

We kicked off our new IEYC unit with a walk to the reservoir to start learning about animal habitats. We also learned quite a bit about different bears! (Our walk to the reservoir was most definitely a Bear Hunt!)

And of course, we had lots of exciting days in our ABC Countdown!

D is for Drawing – We got our own Drawing Journals!

E is for Extra Tablet Time!

F is for Favourite Book – We read so much that day!

G is Games Day! – We shared and got along so well together playing our favourite games together.

And H was for Health and Fitness! Our Sports Day! Thank you so much to all the children who showed great sporting behaviour and worked in their class and teams so well. And thank you to all the parents who came out to support their children and the whole school on this great day. A HUGE thank-you to Mr. Dunn for organizing such a special event!

Just 4 weeks of school left! We’re in the homeward stretch! Let’s keep our energy levels high and have a great last few weeks of term!

Before we begin, let’s have a reminder about Sports Day next Friday. Please ensure your child is wearing PE appropriate clothes and shoes. They should have a hat and sun cream to protect them from the sun. They should bring a water bottle and a lunch that does not need to be microwaved as we are having a picnic on the field for lunch. This is also a reminder to check your email from Mr. Dunn to see what colour team your child is on and to please dress them in the correct colour shirt to help keep the team games organised. This year we will not be giving out Gold, Silver, and Bronze prizes for any games, but instead we will be giving a Good Sportsmanship award to someone in the class.

Good Sportsmanship leads us to the first exciting thing that happened this week. We are doing Kindness Morning Meetings. We spend a little time each morning learning more and more about kindness and how to be a good friend. This translates well into Good Sportsmanship so we’ll encorporate that next week. Kindness will be the focus of our Morning Meeting for the rest of the term.

We had so much going on this week I nearly forgot to take pictures of it all. We finished up our To the Rescue! unit culminating with freeing some toys that The Mighty Freeze had frozen in the ice. The students were quick to realise we needed warm water to melt the ice!

We had an excellent time in Phonics and Ms. Yuli was able to snap a few photos!

Of course we began our Alphabet Countdown with A: Adventure Day and our trip to The Lightning Man Experience! It was such a delightful time. We practiced teamwork. We went on a rocket. We helped Lightning Man get his powers back. And we became Lightning People ourselves – those were the ID cards that went home in your child’s backpack on the day of the trip.

B is for Breakfast and the students tentatively enjoyed Ms. M’s homemade pancakes.

C is for Craft and Compliment. What we made is a bit of a surprise. We made a special craft just for you parents and caregivers! We also took a walk down to the post office and posted our craft to you. The postal worker said it will arrive on Tuesday so keep an eye on the mailbox! Parents with children in Mrs. Sim’s class: both classes made the same craft but Mrs. Sim’s went home today in their backpack. Do remind your child not to be sad, their present to you will be coming in the mail and you know it’s very special!

We will be beginning a new IEYC unit Monday which will take us to the end of the year. Also some of next’s week’s Alphabet Countdown involve bringing in things from home. F: Favourite Book and G: Game Day. I especially want a book brought in. If you do not have a game to send in, that’s OK. We’ll have lots of fun things to play here at school. I would prefer the game is a board or card game and not a video type game.

It looks like we’re set to have a wonderful, sunny weekend so please enjoy the weather and come back to school Monday rested and refreshed for a new week of learning!

Wow! We had such a great week! We continued learning about real-life heroes by looking at different forms of transportation that are used in real life. We did a categorization activity looking at air, roads, rail, and water. Then we made our own Superhero transportation. We looked at Google Earth and all the places all around the world that we’re from before making some maps of our own to play with our transportation toys. We also did some activities in the hall learning how to move forward, backward, left, and right the way we would on a map.

In exciting Phonics news, everyone has made amazing strides in learning to read and write. The students who were not doing phonics for most of the year have begun learning simple sounds. Their sounds were: M, A, and S this week. The students who have been working on phonics all year have moved onto CVC words. We have been using various methods to segment and blend words as the initial stages of reading. Some students are already reading CVC words and that will continue to be built upon.

Next week on Wednesday our Alphabet Countdown begins with Adventure Day: Field Trip to the Lightning Man Experience. Please remember to dress your child in their school uniform to go on the trip. Please pack water, a snack, and a lunch that does not need to be microwaved as it will be a full-day trip.

Our Alphabet Countdown continues Thursday with B: Breakfast. We will have a special snack of fluffy pancakes at break time on Thursday. You can send a snack in case your child does not like pancakes but there is no need to provide a snack that day. The pancakes are made with: flour, milk, egg, butter, sugar, and baking powder. We will eat syrup on the pancakes. If there are dietary reasons your child cannot have this treat please let me know ASAP so I can make an alternate breakfast that everyone can enjoy.

That’s it for this week! Have a great weekend. Let’s cross our fingers that the rain passes us by and we finally see the sun. But if not, have a great time regardless and come back to school rested on Monday!

This year, we will be doing a countdown of the last 26 school days. Can you believe that starts May 17th! We’ll kick off our Alphabet Coundown with A: Adventure Day on May 17th which is our Field Trip!

There are certain days where your child will need to bring or do something like F: Favourite Book Day, G: Bring a Game Day, and P: Pajamma Day. If you have any questions please let me know but I will be sending clarification as the days approach. 

I have emailed you this countdown as a PDF and a copy will be going home tomorrow for your reference.

Let’s rock and roll into summer with our ABCs!!

What an exciting, short week we had!

The students had such fun creating their superhero Mission Control boxes and going on their Superhero Training with their costumes after The Mighty Freeze had kidnapped our precious Bunny! We are now full-fledged Superheroes!

We spent some time learning about real-life superheroes: the community helpers who do so much for us in our daily lives such as doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, and firefighters. We’ll continue on this theme next week.

We got back to small-group phonics lessons, literacy centers, and maths centers.

Of course we had lots of puzzles, colouring, and play time. The children were very happy to see the return of play dough to our classroom and have been engaging in a lot of creative play with that.

Just some more information about our field trip: in alignment with this IEYC unit on Superheroes, we will be going to The Lightning Man Experience. Lightning Man is a superhero who works with electricity! It should be lots of fun. The trip will be Wednesday May 17th. There is a cost of 10,000won/child that can be paid in an envelope to the admin office. A permission form will go out early next week.

When we return on Monday, the Happy Boat children will come visit our school for a great day of learning exchange. What fun that will be to see our friends again!

That’s all for this week! Have a great Children’s Day. Have a good rest this long weekend and we’ll see you refreshed on Monday!

Wow! We had an adventurous week! We began Monday by finding out The Mighty Freeze had hidden all the pages of the storybook Ms. M went to the library to get. We saw their signature snowflakes all around and were able to retrieve the pages. Then we had to put the book back in order! After putting the book back in order and telling the story of the Three Little Pigs, we returned to the classroom and imagined what it would be like if Super Daisy from the previous week hadn’t saved us from Planet Pea. The peas we made got into the strawberries and sandwiches! Later in the day we made our own superhero 3-panel comic books and practiced writing some words.

On Tuesday, we used our tablets to create our own superhero avatars. We linked them with the IEYC personal goals and gave them names. For example, Kind-Heart is Empathetic and Dr. Change is Adaptable. We created a lovely display to remind us of these qualities that now hangs on our board in the classroom.

On Wednesday we painted superheroes using our imagination and watercolours. I’m so impressed with how much the children’s artistic skills have improved over the course of this year.

On Thursday The Mighty Freeze struck again, kidnapping a host of superheroes. We rescued them from around the room and soon after began designing our own superhero costumes.

On Friday we had a day that was not nearly as messy as anticipated. Thank you, parents, for dressing your children in appropriate clothes. We began making our superhero costumes. We began this unit by making our masks and on Friday we painted our wrist bands and belt buckles. We also tie dyed our capes. The final result will be revealed tomorrow.

Throughout the week, we had plenty of play time as well. The children are very proud of the structures they’ve been building with our blocks and the puzzles they’ve been solving.

With Mr. de Klerk’s and Mr. Dunn’s class away on the school residential trip, we had a special assembly on Friday dealing with our core value of Respect. Sometimes the students across the school do not treat each other or the teachers with appropriate respect and we felt it was a good idea to focus on this core value as a whole community. We divided into groups and researched respect. We drew pictures of how we could show respect (that was largely done by our class), we found the definition of respect, some synonyms, and some quotes about respect and made beautiful posters to help remind us of this most important of core values. It was great seeing the children across the year groups work together and help each other.

That’s it for Week 3! A quick note that we will be having a trip in Week 6. A permission form and details will come out soon. Let’s keep learning!

What a great week we had. We began our week with a fun trip to Happy Boat Kindergarten where we planted seeds with our new friends. Those flower pots went home with the children on Monday. Don’t forget to water them every 5-7 days and keep them in sunlight.

Before kicking off our new IEYC unit we made a lovely spring craft of coffee filter butterflies. They turned out so beautifully!

We had a fun time in PE. We stayed indoors this week because the weather on Tuesday was not cooperative. Among the activities we did, we used a video working to do calisthenics and construct a paper airplane. The children got a great working and had lots of fun.

On Wednesday we kicked off our IEYC unit To The Rescue! All about superheroes. As Ms. M was cleaning around her desk she found a surprise box left hidden for us. But the Supervillan The Mighty Freeze came in and stole it from us. We followed The Mighty Freeze’s snowflake track around the school and recovered the box. Inside were superhero masks which we decorated. We will be making a more intensive superhero costume in the coming weeks.

In the days following we read some Superhero themed story books such as Supertato and Super Daisy. In these stories we learned a lot about different vegetables and rescued the food from the Evil Peas. We made clay vegetables and painted our own versions of Planet Pea using green paint mixed with various substances such as rice, flour, and sand to make textured paint.

We did some whole-group maths and phonics this week. Small groups will be starting soon.

During homework sharing time those friends who brought in their Spring Break News had a great time sharing their vacations with the class. Everyone did exciting activities on break!

And of course, we had lots of great developmental play time.

That’s it for this week. We’ll have more exciting superhero adventures next week! Rest well and we’ll see you on Monday!

Welcome back from Spring Break! It’s so great to be back and see everyone again. I was absent for a few days at the beginning of the week but the children were well taken care of by Ms. Luna and Mr. Green.

We’ve worked on some whole-class and one-on-one phonics and maths as well as some creative tasks such as making flowers and a great springtime name activity. The students also had developmental play time where they are forever amazing me as they show their learning through play.

Homework this week is just a report of how you spent your spring break. If your child wants to present it during sharing time, please send it in before Friday either as a photo or the physical paper.

We’re trying something new with Star of the Week this term. Everyone in the class is helping Ms. M to say why the chosen student is special. I think this change will help students practice their kindness and empathy.

On Monday we will be having our second exchange with the Happy Boat kindergarten where we will plant seeds in their potted plant garden! How exciting.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week!

Wow! We’ve almost made it! I can’t believe there’s only one week to go until our Spring Break!

Our trip to the Happy Boat Kindergarten was an absolute success. We had such a great time meeting new friends. I was so proud of many of the Happy Boat children who practiced and introduced themselves to us in English! What a welcoming experience. This exchange program will be a monthly event with us visiting them sometimes and their school coming to visit our school other times. I will let you know closer to April’s date when we are going again.

But that surely wasn’t the only fun we had this week! We learned lots about sea animals. The children had a very fun time learning about whales. We listened to a song from my childhood, Baby Beluga, and ordered different types of whales by size. We also made a fun paper plate whale craft. That was an excellent exercise with our fine motor skills.

We also learned a lot about SCUBA diving. We made our own SCUBA masks and tanks and then went on a dive in the corridors looking for sea animals. We brought those sea animals back to our class and used them to talk about some feelings like being sad and scared. We brainstormed things we could do when we felt that way in order to feel better.

In Phonics we looked at QU, NG, and NK. The last two are very tricky. We’ll be reviewing digraphs for the rest of this term and begin next term beginning to blend letters and start READING! How exciting! It’s been wonderful watching the children’s literacy skills blossom this year.

That’s all for this week. Have a restful weekend and come in refreshed and ready for our last week of the term!