BIC Sant Agustí News (10/1/21)

Dear parents

As you will see from the newsletter, everyone has settled back to school very well and we have welcomed many new students who have already become friends. As the children start school or move through the school into their different year groups, it is lovely to see them exploring their new classrooms and environments with different eyes. Every class is different and the dynamics within a group can change so quickly; it is lovely to see how quickly the children adapt to new circumstances and welcome children into their group of friends.

Some children have been busy trying new skills and learning through the Extra curricular activities; we have a variety of activities to choose from this year so please support our programme by encouraging your child to try activities. As I write this, I can hear the Musical Theatre group singing, see the Yoga group in the Nursery playground and have watched the Art group designing their projects. What a lovely end to the day! We would also like to have a volleyball club and a basketball club so please encourage your children to sign up.

Another “new” reintroduction is our class assemblies- we will be holding them on Fridays in the mornings, so please try to come and watch your child's assembly if you possibly can. It gives the children an opportunity to work together as a class as well as give them a super opportunity to perform to a responsive audience. Check out the Notice board to find out when your child´s class assembly will be held.

Last week was Roald Dahl Day; Dahl is a very popular author and lived a very interesting life which we talked about in assembly last week. Although his parents were Norwegian, he lived in Wales in his childhood before moving to England for boarding school and then moving to Kenya and Canada, so his life was a little similar to some of our children gaining life experience as they move around the world. The children's favourite story was the tale of Roald Dahl, as a little boy, putting a dead mouse into a jar of sweets in a sweet shop to frighten the horrible shopkeeper - which he certainly did. However she did get her revenge!

Dahl was very clever with words and he uses words and images very well to describe situations and people. The children particularly liked these quotes:

Wishing you a magical and sunny weekend!

Mrs Short

We have done so many exciting things over the past two weeks, it's hard to pick and choose which ones to tell you all about! Let's start with the amazing news that all Starfish children are used to their new school routines. We now have daily circle times, introduce a daily special helper each day and we are well on our way with our topic, ¨All about me¨. Starfish children have learned several songs such as ¨Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes¨, we've looked at our own and each other's facial features, we've learned each other's names and are rapidly becoming a tight class unit; a super Starfish family!

One of our favourite activities so far has definitely been face painting, so much fun was had by all, including Miss Helen!

We have been enjoying the fantastic weather we've had over the past weeks and we have spend a lot of time outside; we've planted sunflowers and beans, watering them each day - the sand pit and water pit are now open for use and we have a dressing up shop outside for the Starfish children to explore.

There are just so many great things going on in the Nursery classroom.

My favourite mention however, must be that we are now getting to know each and every individual Starfish child, they are getting to us very well and we are having a lot of fun together!

As this week we have welcomed the start of Autumn, we will be looking closely at different weather patterns and harvest festivals all over the world in the next weeks to come :).

Wishing you a great weekend!

What an amazing two weeks we’ve had in Seahorse Class! We’ve been so busy that it seems we’ve been in school longer! All the children have adapted really well and they know their school routines by heart. We are also hands-on with the school ‘Golden Rules’, making sure that we truly understand what each of them means; everybody is trying really hard to be kind and friendly, while helping others. Fantastic!

This term, we have started our learning journey by talking about ‘Seahorses’ and finding out all the things we don't know about them: what they eat, where do they live?... The children have also been creating different art projects for this topic and the results are very artistic.

In Early Years we are always trying to have fun while we are learning, a principle that we apply in every single area. Sometimes we sing and dance to grasp new vocabulary or to help us with our counting; sometimes, we use our ‘magic finger and magic book’ to write all sorts of marks and lines up in the air , to develop our writing skills, but always having fun!

In Seahorse class we are gradually learning about ‘connections’. It is really important that we all connect with the people we spend our days with, making new relationships and bonding with each other. It is also important to keep making connections between the children’s little world and our big adult world. For this reason, we take every opportunity to learn about what’s happening in the world, no matter if it is nearby or faraway; any event that is important for any of the seahorses, is important for all of us. These two weeks we’ve had a few events and celebrations that have kept us ‘connected’ including: two birthdays and watching and learning about rainbows, Singapore’s ‘mooncake’ festivity and the active volcano in Canary islands. Wow! So many things are happening!

Although Autumn has officially started, here in Mallorca it seems to take a bit longer to arrive (despite a little bit of rain) and that’s why we’ve been taking every single opportunity we’ve had to enjoy the lovely weather by using our outdoors area to continue our learning. In the weeks to come, as the season arrives on the island, we will be looking for those Autumn signs and getting ready for it.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

These seals are growing and changing daily! We have all settled down now into our class routines and schedules and the fun learning has begun. In Maths we are busy making 4, 5 and 6. We have been using as many different concrete materials as possible each day to help consolidate the partitioning of these numbers. Each day after lunch we take a look at real life maths photos in our environment and make connections using our maths eyes- we have seen mathematical connection in pictures of cars, pavements and even hair rollers! We have been busy keeping our bodies and minds in shape too with our daily 1-100 countdown session online, moving our bodies, counting and singing all at the same time.

In Humanities we are learning about Our School. We have been busy studying old photos of the school and taking some guided treasure hunt walks around the building. On Tuesday Mrs. Baggely gave us a very informative and interesting talk about the school in the past and how it was a boarding school and a hotel too! The children had pre prepared questions ready for her.

This lovely lesson was linked to Rosie the Hen who likes to take walks too. Watch out for her as she will be popping up all throughout the year in this subject area!

In Art we began our theme of Colour Chaos with paint- taking our paintbrushes for a walk. We then linked that to Piet Mondrain, the famous Dutch artist and we are busy making some imitations of his work this week.

In Phonics we are coming to the end of our first set of phonemes! The children now know the stories, sounds and rhymes for the letters SATIP and N. We have loved doing Phonics stations and enjoy the variety at each workbench. Well done Seals for completing your spellings every night!

Science- we have been predicting and measuring our hands and feet using various objects in class. We know how to collect information and record it.

We are continuing to follow our Golden Rules, trying our best to be a top friend, student and Seal. Each day is a new beginning. We learn from our mistakes and we are very quick to forgive!

Well done Seals.

Happy Harvest one and all!

So much work and learning have taken place in the last two weeks, we are not sure how we have fitted it all in!

In Science we have been learning about the four main habitats - urban, beach, coastal and woodland. We worked together to identify what lives in each habitat and how they survive there for food, water and shelter. Next week we are hoping to go to the beach to explore a coastal habitat and see what we can find.

During our Maths lessons we have been brushing up on our number bonds and doubling numbers. We have been exploring bigger numbers and looking for patterns that will help us with our calculations. We have speed tests using our dice to see how many number sentences we can make in 3 minutes. We had a champion this ……..WELL DONE MINEKE - you are this week's addition superstar!

In ICT we have been learning how to log on to the chromebooks and get to a website. This week we have also been practising how to get onto our own Bug Club and Abacus accounts as Ms Eccleshall has allocated some extra books for us to read and some maths games to consolidate our learning.

Thank you Mums, Dads and Grandparents for completing your homework on toys and games - we will be comparing the results next week with the toys that we like to play with and see what the similarities and differences are.

In Literacy we have been reading a range of fables and learning about the moral behind the story. We particularly liked “The Ant and the Grasshopper” and enjoyed acting out “The Frog and the Scorpion”. The children were all very convincing scorpions asking the frog to give them a ride across the river! I am sure they use these powers of persuasion at home as well

From Year 2 upwards each class has two representatives on the Pupil Council, this week we had a vote in class for who we all thought would do a good job and the winners were Amelie and Mineke. Well done girls!

In art , we have been learning about pencil sketching and tried creating different shades using just our pencil. We have also painted our yellow friendship roses ready to present to our Mums and Dads at our class assembly.

This week we also had a very special reading session with the Year 6 class. We shared reading books with our Year 6 buddies, they read a story and then asked us questions about it. We all love listening to stories!

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

It has been a fun filled couple of weeks in Year 3. We have all settled into our new routines and we have been learning lots! Check out what we’ve been up to in our lessons…

English

In English, we have been identifying different word classes including nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. We loved becoming noun detectives for the day and using our eagle eyes on various activities to spot those nouns! In one of our activities we went outside onto our lovely balcony area and observed all the nouns around us… we spotted sailing boats, ferries and different types of birds! Afterwards, we used our knowledge to identify different types of nouns in texts!

Maths

In Miss Conway’s maths group, we love using practical resources! Over the last week, we have been learning how to use different resources including Rekenrek and Dienes! We used the Rekenrek to check our number bonds to 100. We have also been learning all about odd and even numbers and how to double using the double diamond method.

Art

Our Art lessons have linked to our topic based around ‘The Globe’. We have been focussing on the continent of Asia so we couldn’t think of better way to spend our art lessons than drawing and designing an elephant in a mehndi style. Check out some of our work so far!

Physical Education

This term we are focusing on gymnastics! We have been focusing on the basic principles and safety of rolls. We have perfected how to do teddy bear rolls, log rolls, crouched forward roll and backwards rolls! It was very fun.

Have a fantastic weekend from The Dolphins

Year 4 have been so busy the past 2 weeks it is fun to remember what we have already achieved, learnt and completed in 10 school days. Settling into new routines and learning lots of new facts, in a fun filled and sometimes a little messy way!

In English we have been learning about s-t-r-e-t-c-h-ing sentences by adding interesting and exciting words using the 5Ws and a H!This has also helped us with the types of words we use when we write. We have started to write, write, write… building our stamina so that we can get more fantastic ideas down onto paper. Our punctuation Ninja skills have continued to have a work out (practising our Kata) as we have been learning about adding speech marks and remembering the punctuation we already know.

In maths we have been reviewing our knowledge and understanding of place value, using 2 and 3 digit numbers. We have then used this understanding to continue our learning about using mental and written methods for addition and subtraction as well as continuing to learn new games to help us learn our times tables and number facts.

In science the journey of food has continued… We have made a labelled digestive tract to hang from the ceiling and we have all made our own models of the digestive system. These have been put up on display in the corridor. They are fascinating and engrossing (and slightly gross!) viewing as you walk past the classroom. We have also started the process of mummifying tomatoes to link our learning about our insides with our topic, ‘Ancient Egypt’.

Mrs Short has visited the class and shared an exciting and engaging presentation on pyramids based on her time in Egypt… in art we have started our art and design project to draw and make pyramids. In geography we have explored Egypt using google earth, found the ancient pyramids and been on a virtual tour of the Pyramids of Giza.

Have a great couple of weeks. We are really looking forward to telling you all about what we have been up to in the next 2 weeks...

Whales are in full swing with their autumn term learning and are working so hard in all subjects! In English, we have just finished learning about imaginary world stories, when we designed fantasy worlds (see some of our amazing designs below!) described them using expanded noun phrases, explored the structure of these stories and then wrote our own. All the stories began with a normal character in the normal world who travelled through a portal into a strange and magical world and had to defeat a villain! Now, we have moved away from fiction and are learning about factsheets!

In Maths we have been consolidating our knowledge and understanding of place value, using 5 digit numbers. We have also worked on mental and written methods for addition and subtraction as well as carrying out an investigation into Palindromic numbers. Can your child explain what this means?

Gymnastics is our focus in PE this term and the children have been developing their team working skills. They have learnt different balances and put together routines involving a way of travelling, making shapes, balances and always remembering to show their start and end position!

We are loving our Science topic, learning about living things and last week we discovered how plants reproduce assexually. We decided to do our own experiment taking cuttings of geranium parts, placing them in a cup of water and now we are waiting for new roots to grow! We then recorded our work using labelled diagrams. Hopefully in a few weeks time we will have new plants to plant on our balcony!

Year Six took Year 2 under their wing and guided them with their reading on the Lemon Tree Terrace. It was a heart-warming sight to see how keen the Sharks were to help improve the reading skills of the Turtles.

In English, the Sharks have been learning to improve their paragraphing and have produced some superb examples of detailed and descriptive prose that really help guide their reader.

In Science, Year 6 tried their hands at building spaghetti and marshmallow towers to see who could construct the tallest. There were some interesting designs incorporating a range of different ways of making very flimsy building materials more secure, from supporting cross members to flying buttresses. Some teams had the bright idea of attaching an aerial at the last moment to beat their competitors! The architectural theme continued in History where Year Six are beginning to construct their own Parthenon as part of their Ancient Greece wall display.

In PE we are learning the basics of gymnastics focusing on balance. Year 6 were keen to see if they could beat Mr. Hodson when he challenged them to balance on one foot with their eyes closed. After the age of 50, anything over 9 seconds is considered an achievement. Unfortunately, while most of the class made Mr. Hodson feel very old, he did manage to beat quite a few of them.

Estas semanas con los niños y niñas de Seahorses hemos estado repasando conceptos en español y para ello hemos leído un cuento que nos encanta: EL MONSTRUO DE COLORES.

A través de esta historia hemos conocido también diferentes emociones y le hemos contado a Miss Maria todas aquellas cosas que nos producen alegría, tristeza, miedo, calma o que nos hacen enfadar. Ahora somos todos expertos en este cuento y por eso hemos conseguido nuestro CARNET de monstruo, el cual llevaremos con nosotros durante este curso.

Bueno estas semanas ¡hemos tenido mucha aventura! Nuestro camarada Leonardo el Alegre nos encomendó la misión de hacernos unos expertos en piratas para poder ayudarle a encontrar el tesoro perdido. Por eso, los alumnos de Year 1&2 hemos trabajado duro para conseguirlo. El esperado tesoro….¡unos diplomas piratas!

This Wednesday during our PE class, our primary students were having fun while playing a hockey game. Students have practiced dribbling, moving with or without the ball, stopping and changing directions. Our young players have explored the variety of ways to pass the ball to a partner in a game situation.

Well done to everyone!