Sparkles and Kisses: 2016

Tuesday, 6 December 2016

Christmas time

This month we are going to learn about Christmas.

Christmas is the day when we celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus.

We will learn the Nativity story and discuss the love we should spread throughout the Christmas season and all through the year.

We will also discuss about Santa and his elves building our toys and checking the list to see that we were good children this year.

There are also the reindeers that with magic on Christmas night will fly high in the sky carrying Santa on his sleigh all around the world to give the presents to all the good girls and boys.

Santa will then go down the chimneys or through the windows when we are fast asleep....

and put our lovely present underneath our Christmas tree!

Monday, 4 April 2016

The topic- in the garden is a very entertaining topic for children in Kindergarten. It is very important for them to learn about the environment around us : how trees and plants grow and about the lovely insects we can find. This will help them to appreciate nature more and learn how to take care and respect it.

We are going to focus a lot about the life of a growing seed.

The parts of a flowering plant are an important scientific concept that will be explored in future school topics too. At this level, it's important that children of this age understand the function of petals, roots, and leaves.

There are also many beautiful little creatures we can find in the garden :

Bees

ladybirds

butterflies

caterpillars

Wednesday, 2 March 2016

Article for parents

Teaching correct pencil grip. Help your child learn to hold a pencil correctly.

This article is about pencil grip - nevertheless I would like you to try this with your children by using a crayon - only when they have mastered crayon grip, try it out by using the pencil; as the pencil is much thinner and more difficult to hold properly - Miss Ben :)

To teach the correct way to hold a pencil, you can have the child pretend his/her dominant (writing) hand is an alligator. Open and close the alligator’s mouth – and show that the alligator is hungry and wants to eat the pencil!

Place the pencil on the bottom jaw of the alligator,and close the alligator’s mouth on the pencil.

How to teach a child to hold a pencil correctly

Now that the alligator is holding the pencil, watch what he does with the pencil!

As the alligator eats the pencil, he doesn’t like the taste of the pencil, so he puckers his lips. (Show your children what it means to pucker your lips!)

He puckers his lips and curls his jaws in the shape of an ‘o’ – and clenches the pencil in his teeth.

How to hold a pencil correctly: The alligator trick

If your child continues to struggle, there are some neat tools out there that really help children to grip a pencil correctly. Click the picture below to see the tool we recommend for teaching someone how to hold a pencil correctly. We do not recommend the small grips that slip onto a pencil – in my experience, they still confuse the child where and how to hold the pencil. These sort of pencil grips may help your child feel more comfortable holding a pencil (ergonomically correcting an already correct grip).