Pre-writing

With the objective of developing fine motor skills, 3 year old children made this exercise of tracing to promote eye-hand coordination. It helps to strengthen the muscles needed for fine motor control.

First, the teachers demonstrate the way to grasp the pencil using the “pencil grip” in which the pencil is held between the thumb and the first two fingers. Tracing, colouring, and working on art are all activities that will help develop fine motor control. 

For the first time this academic year, M.José visited us yesterday

M.José Guimera is the academic advisor assigned to Sansueña. M.José will attend the center on a regular basis with the intention of making the development of  the methodology become a success.

The observations in the classroom are twofold: how we teachers implement the English  method in our classrooms, if we use the resources properly, if our classes maintain structures, if we consider all the Multiple Intelligences… and on the other, students are done track in their progress in learning English.

We are looking forward to seeing you on the 24^th of November for your second visit!

Autumn and trees

In this unit, children will learn about different aspects of autumn: the fruits we eat, the clothes we wear and the weather that is associated with this season.

Left and Right

The day before taking holidays, we introduced the concepts of left and right. We tried to improve the linguistic and mathematical competences by having children to look at the pictures on page 18 and asking them to place their hands on the outlines. The teachers showed them in English that when the hands are in this position, the index and thumb of the left hand form and L.

Finally, we had children colour the left hand green and the right hand red and print them on page 19.

We used green tempera paint for the left hand and red for the right hand and encouraged the children to use the words.

Pre-math skills

This week, we have continued with the pre-math skills. This book 1 will be dedicated to colours, shapes, and concepts like up-down, left-right, same-different, over-under, near-far, fat-thin and tall-short.

This time, we sang with the children the song Five Little Ducks to review the numerals 1-5. After singing, the teachers had them finger paint the ducks at the same time they said the numbers.

One little duck went out to play

Over the hill, far, far far away

When Mama duck said

Quack, quack, quack, quack,

No little ducks came

Back at home

And to help children gain an understanding at the subtraction concept, we drew five ducks on the board and sang the song erasing one duck at a time and having children count the ones that are left, using this opportunity to introduce the concept of none and zero.

English corner dedicated to Our Lady of El Pilar

Our Lady of El Pilar is the name given to the Blessed Virgin Mary for her miraculous appearance in Zaragoza, Spain at the time of the emergence of Christianity. She our Patroness the 12th of October and many of us will visit Her in the Basilica of Our Lady of El Pilar

This week, the English Department has also wanted to contribute to the celebration of the festivity of El Pilar.

We have decorated the corner in the entrance with crafts made by all the children for the Virgin.

Three-year-olds coloured a beautiful flower in many colours, 4 year-olds coloured and cut with scissors red carnations, the most well-known flower these days in Zaragoza, and five-year-olds, punched, glued and cut the “cachirulo”. Afterwards, they headed for the corner and decorated it by themselves.

From the English Department of Sansueña we want to wish you all the best for these days of festival in Her honor. 

Working in the Daily Routine with the Digital Whiteboard

The big screen size makes interaction between the mini-teacher and the group easier and allows for different types of activities: prayers, who is in class?, weather, songs and chants, worksheet explanation from the book…

We find this method is very attractive and beneficial for their learning. It increases student participation, attention and memory, motivates and increases comprehension.

That is why we teachers use them everyday in our classes.The digital whiteboard is a system made up of a computer and video projector that allows the English teachers to show our contents on an interactive screen in a digital format.

It is a perfect way for the whole group and for the “teacher assistant” in particular to see the information.  

Cumpleaños del colegio

Por fin llego el gran día, tan esperado por todos. Hoy Educación Infantil se llenaba de color y alegría con los preciosos y vistosos disfraces de nuestros niños. Os dejamos algunas fotos, tenéis muchas más en la pág web.

Os dejamos unos vídeos de distintos momentos, para que veáis lo bien que nos lo hemos pasado

Four and five-year-old children also enjoyed Goldilocks.

Congratulations for the perfomance, teachers!

                                       

Como veis un día estupendo, con cuentacuentos, juegos, bailes, chuches, helado de postre y muchas cosas más.

Muchas felicidades Sansueña

 que cumplas muchos más

y los celebremos todos juntos.

GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS.

This year to celebrate Sansueña’s birthday , teacher Miss Connie from the English Department has written and organized  a delicious story about three bears and a rather nosy girl called Goldilocks. It´s called GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS.

This delightfully simple and surprising tale is ideal for small children, who will be able to enjoy it tomorrow morning at 10 o´clock. The decoration and the music have also been made by our beloved teacher Miss Connie, who will tell this story to children with the help of Miss Oxana. 

We will also enjoy the play "Little Red Riding Hood"  

 Tickets are ready for you and we hope you enjoy!

Homeschooling: Congratulations!

Congratulations to all pupils and their parents because you are doing great!

Children have done track 1 twice and coloured the faces on the homeschooling sheet.

We only have to remind you to do track 2 on Thursday and send it back in the plastic folder on Friday as most of you are already doing.

Great job!

Listening and identifying sounds

With the objective of developing auditory discrimination, we teachers of English apply this method of listening and identifying sounds for all levels of books in Infantil. What we first do, is explaining the children that they have to listen carefully to the sounds we teachers are about to play. They should keep completely silent in order to make the activity easier for the whole class. We play the sound once, and try to make children guess what they´ve heard. If nobody gives us the correct answer, which is rather unusual, we play it a second time. Now, it is time to ask children to open their books and identify the picture that shows the sound they have heard.

The Listening and identifying sound exercises will provide children with experiences that stimulate listening and speaking, and when these skills are developed early in childhood, children are not only building oral language but they are being prepared to understand the concept of written language.  

5 year olds

 3 year olds

4 year olds

Daily Routine in the English class

These are one of the most important activities since they are repeated daily for long periods of time, three weeks for example. They allow the children to feel sure about what they are working on, what they will learn in the future or what they have already learnt. Thanks to routines, students gain confidente, increse their self-esteem and decrease their insecurity. The child isn´t afraid to participate or communicate with the teacher or his-her classmates.

With Daily Routine, children work on expressions that they can incorporate day to day through questions: How are you? How do you feel?, commands: Clean the board, pick up, throw away, tidy up…, and routines such as greetings, prayer, how many are in the class, who is missing, the weather, going to the bathroom and songs.

All of these go along with specific actions in a specific space, the English Corner, sitting in a circle, arms closed, being quiet… This way the children learn the activity and its response by intuition and as a result will improve their comprehension and awareness. 

Tracing raindrops

Last Monday, we did this worksheet in class. They had to listen to their teacher and trace raindrops paths after talking about rainy days.

The purpose of the “trace” worksheet is for the student to do a small task on paper, this time individually, others in pairs or in groups. By doing so, he gains autonomy and creativity. This task, tracing lines, contribute to the development of their verbal and motor skills and artistic sense. 

I love this classroom rules display

Among the most important classroom rules and behaviour spectations we have: be ready to learn, say please and thank you, follow directions, raise your hand, work hard, believe in yourself…Our Classroom rules for the English class are the following:

Colour Red and Number 1.

Last week, 3 year olds learnt colour Red and Number 1. We introduced the colour and talked about things that are usually red. Then, showed them pictures of red objects and asked them to point to as many red objects as they could see in the classroom.

“My Classroom”

This week, we have been working on the topic “My Classroom” with 3, 4 and 5 year-old children in order to build vocabulary and verbal skills. We asked children to describe what they see in the picture and told them that this picture shows some of the things they can find inside a classroom. They said the vocabulary words out loud and ask children to try to identify the items in their own classroom: teacher, classmates, boys, girls, desk, chairs, window, pencils, books, crayons, glue, using flashcards to reinforce the connection between words and images. We took children for a walk around the school and showed them the other classrooms and the playground.

They had a whale of a time!

Homeschooling

One of the  parts  of the English method is  Homeschooling, through which families have the opportunity of participating in the learning of English with their children.

Homeschooling is a task to be done by children at home every Thursday evening after school with an adult. The purpose of this exercise is to improve listening discrimination and pronunciation, as well as classroom work.

This year, students will not take any CD home. Instead we will download in our computer, tablet or smartphone the mp3 of the track. The procedure is very easy and it takes a few seconds.

Now, we are going to inform you of how to do that:

First, you enter visor.amco.me

And there you enter your user and password. Select Unit 1 (which in fact means Book 1) and finally you choose 3 year olds or four or five year olds.

Don´t forget to take the envelope back with the Homeschooling inside on Friday morning. That would be great. 

  3 YEAR OLDS

4 YEAR OLDS

5 YEAR OLDS