Fawn A

Unit of Inquiry

Fawns commenced their first unit under the Transdisciplinary Theme – Who we are.

Central Idea: We explore who we are through our senses.

Lines of Inquiry:

• Identification of five senses
• We use each of our senses to learn and explore
• Our feelings

Students were taken for a nature walk wherein they observed their immediate environment and inquired using their five senses. Later, they were engaged in an activity in which they sorted picture cut-outs of the things they saw. They identified things such as school clock, birds, aeroplane, squirrel, fishpond, kites flying in the sky, school gate.A mind map was created which included the student anecdotes that drew attention  to the sense of sight.

Circle Time

As a part of Early years skill-building programme and  integration to the Learner Profile attributes, moral values were reinforced by the facilitators using role-plays depicting different social scenarios. These included – saying ‘please’, ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’, greeting one another politely; the importance of being ‘principled’ and ‘caring’ was also undertaken.

Discussion on Independence Day was undertaken. Students were shown audio visuals related to the facts and information of the festival. They enjoyed singing and enacting a patriotic song, ‘Nanha munna raahi hu’.

A sponge dabbing activity was also done wherein students crafted the National flag in their art file.

With ‘Rakshabandhan’ coinciding with  Independence Day and ‘Janmashtami’, being celebrated over the weekend, students were explained the importance of festivals and rituals and ceremonies associated with them. Later, they loved watching audio-visual stories related to the festivals. Students ardently participated and engaged themselves in craft activities related to the festivals.

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Language

Language was integrated with Art, where reinforcement of sound ‘a’ was done. Students coloured within the outline of the sound ‘a’ and pasted pictures associated to the sound such as astronaut, apple, and ant.

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Students actively sung the rhyme, ‘5 senses’ thereby integrating the unit of inquiry.

Math

Math was integrated with Art, where reinforcement of the shape ‘triangle’ was undertaken by making a fish using various triangular shape.

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Students were involved in an interesting learning engagement of sorting various class material like pompom balls, toy fruits, colour pencils and beads according to the different colour coded trays.

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SEL (Social and Emotional Learning)

Students were introduced to emotions like happy, angry, sad and surprised with the help of emoticons, role-play and songs for this helped them to label what they were feeling. Understanding their feelings and accepting their emotions is the first step towards learning to regulate them.

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Motor skills

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Students eagerly took part in building a tower using the Montessori pink cubes arranging them from biggest to smallest by size. Stacking the cubes, thus helped in developing visual skills of discrimination, coordination and precision.

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Physical Education

Students learned different terminology used during physical training like in, out, up, down, turn, hop, bend.

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Music

Students identified and named the different musical instruments kept in the music room. They also sang ‘Choti-Choti Jeevan Gaadi’, ‘I Love You’ and ‘Insy-Winsy Spider’.

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Dance

Dance lessons focused on basic steps where students showcased fine and gross motor skills.  The concept of dancing statue was also reinforced.

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Art

Students learned to colour the cut out of a circle by moving their crayons in a circular motion. This helped to develop their pincer grip and hone their fine motor skills. The circles will be used to create a bird.

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Library

The students listened to the story ‘Elephant’s Pyjamas sleepover has never been so silly!’ It was a hilarious animal story written by an award-winning children’s author, Michelle Robinson. 

Elephant was invited to a pyjama party and he could not wait to be a part of it. There was just one problem, he did not have any pyjamas. Poor elephant searched everywhere but it only resulted in embarrassment as nothing could fit his enormous body. As he was about to give up, his friends got together and sewed just the right sized pyjamas, so he could attend the fun filled party.

The story focussed on terms like friendship, care and unconditional love.

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Free play

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Circle Time

To create a cohesive learning environment at the beginning of the school year, Essential agreements were made by showing some pictographic references which were followed by some  enactments like-walking in a straight line without pushing, washing hands before and after meals, keeping personal belongings in the cubby holes, keeping the manipulatives back at their proper place and stacking the plates after eating.

Knobbed cylinders were introduced for they aim to enhance student eye hand coordination and gross motor skills. Manipulation of different sizes and dimensions and placing them in the correct order further helped  students to hone visual discrimination, eye hand precision of movement.

Language

Students were introduced to sound ‘a’ through the use of various picture cards, audio-visual clues and objects.

They were also initiated to sand paper tracing of letter ‘a’ to learn and understand its correct formation and directionality.

The students were also shown an audio-visual presentation of a story ‘Daniel Tiger – Grownups come back’, wherein they showed the parent dropping off their child at school, and the child was very reluctant to let go of the parent. Daniel then tells the classmate, “grownups come back” to make her feel better. In the end, it showed the parents returning to pick up their child, which ensured that “grown-ups come back”.

Math

Students were introduced to a new shape ‘and they later pointed out the various objects inside the classroom that were triangular in shape.

Motor skills

To enhance their motor skills, students were engaged in a wide range of activities such as pounding, making tower using blocks, beading, pegging, threading, sorting pompom balls and manipulation of picture puzzles.

Physical Education

Students learned balancing exercises to strengthen the core muscles and to improve their coordination. Balancing exercises helped in improve the ability to react to sudden directional change and prevent accidental falls.

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Music

The students sang ‘Hello, how are you?’ and ‘Choti-Choti Jeevan Gaadi’ song in Hindi. They also identified and named some musical instruments in their music class.

Library

The students were read a different, beautiful book ‘Market Day’, by ‘Lois Ehlert’. The story elucidated a fun trip to the vegetable market to  carry fruits and vegetables to sell .

‘Market Day’ was illustrated with bold and rich colours for it aimed to capture the imagination of a child. The book gave a lot of information on  culture, our connection to food, how it’s grown and where we buy it from, also about people, places and art.

Art

Students identified the shape ‘circle’ and coloured a pre-drawn picture of a smiley using their favourite colour.

They also pasted bits of paper on an old newspaper cut out in the shape of a flower, fish and a tree, for this helped to improve dexterity and eye hand coordination. They worked together in pairs, pasting the bits of paper. Working together helped to develop the ability to share and establish a constructive relationship.

Free Play

Students enjoyed playing with colourful balls and rolled them from one corner to another, climbed the mini rock wall, took turns to slide and later explored the  park. They also worked on their social skills during pretend play time that allowed them to engage and explore real life situations.

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We would like to extend a very warm welcome to all our students. On the first day, students arrived with mixed emotions. They were made to settle into the new vibrant environment in class and were engaged in a variety of learning engagements. During Circle time, both the facilitators and students introduced themselves and learned to mark their attendance on the attendance chart. Students were familiarised with the different learning corners in the class like Reading corner, Blocks station, Garden corner, Creative corner and Reflection corner

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Students were taken out for a nature walk where they enjoyed observing different insects like earthworms, ants and centipedes. Further, they were taken to the school garden and were shown different types of flowering plants. They were very excited to spot various butterflies, birds and squirrels in the garden. They also visited the Fish pond at school and enjoyed observing variety of colourful fish in there.

Language

Students enjoyed a story session in class wherein their communication skills and vocabulary was enhanced during narration of the stories, ‘Bubbles goes to school’ and ‘Bruno learns to share’. 

Math

Colours (blue, yellow, red, green) were discussed through a fun game of hitting the skittles with a ball. Later, students identified the colours of the skittles hit by them.

A number rhyme was introduced in the class, ‘12345 once I caught a fish alive’ to enhance their oral counting skills.

Motor skills

To enhance student’s motor skills, students engaged themselves in a wide range of activities in class such as beading, pegging, threading, transferring with tongs and solving various puzzles.

They also pasted bits of paper on a butterfly cut out as a welcome craft, for this helped to improve dexterity and eye hand coordination.

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Physical education

Students formed the essential agreements which they will follow during their physical education class. They were also involved in different types of rotational and stretching exercises.

Music

Students sang ‘Hello, how are you?’, ‘I Love You’ and ‘Old Mac Donald’ during their music class.

Dance

Dance lessons focused on development of rhythm wherein students loved to showcase their fine and gross movements for contemporary style.

Art

Students began the new academic year by exploring the art space. They went around the art room to feel comfortable. They shared their names and introduced themselves to their facilitators. Students listened to a story, ‘Bruno the artists’ and coloured pre-drawn pictures collectively.

Library

Students visited the library for the first time and were happy to walk around the space. They were read an interactive science story about Maisy, who loved to try out new things, just like all toddlers. Maisy dug, sowed seeds, watered the earth and weeded the garden. The little ones loved upon seeing the carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, and beans coming out of the pop up pages  took theirs first step to developing a green thumb with Maisy and her little Panda.

Free Play

Students enjoyed playing on the slides and climbed the miniature rock wall, swings while they explored the children’s park . They also worked on their social skills through pretend play that allowed them to engage and explore.