WEEK TWO - 25 JULY 2016

Monday morning and it’s week two of our Summer Slam 2016! Welcome!

We hope that you liked the ‘dot-painted’ T-shirts your child brought home, on Friday, together with the official ‘Summer Slam 2016’ t-shirt.  We ask that the latter, be worn to school on Friday, 29 July 2016, please!  Thank you. 

So, it’s a new week and that means, more creativity and fun for all.  We have six new joiners this week and together with their friends from last week, things got rolling.  The new joiners were given an orientation to the layout of the main activity rooms.  Others spent a few minutes with Lao Shi Yan Mei, who presented them with a story about a dog; why its tongue hangs out, how that helps to cool down things, the end of which came, with everyone’s tongue hanging out to have a ‘real-life’ experience!

The highlight of this week in art and craft is moulding objects using the tried and tested (well as of last week!) ‘salt dough’ recipe. This is a very engaging form of craft that you and your children can do at home, with limitless possibilities, of decorating the product.  Shapes, sizes, colours and add-on’s – let your creativity flow!

Then, along came Suhairi with a very bouncy attitude.  Off went the children and soon came the screams of excitement and the strident tones of what we now know as 'toma reggaeton’!  Apparently, a prerequisite for a crazy session of  ‘Zumba’.  The featured song was something quite catchy and the children seemed to have enormous fun following Suhairi’s moves quite well.  Please do visit the gallery via the link provided below for some pictures of the action. 

The ‘Salt Dough’ making, moulding and its baking followed.  First came the introduction to the ingredients – flour and salt.  Their (geographical) origin and processing up to the point of the end product that we see in grocery stores, were presented via media.  Then it was making the dough, combining the ingredients, and stirring and mixing the lot, that soon turn into a pliable material.  Some of the children were able to finish their creations, which ranged from a volcano to pendants!   Setting the mouldings followed by baking them in an oven and that’s where we left it at today. Tomorrow, we shall continue with the children who are yet to complete their creations and then later in the week, we begin decorating.  Yay! 

While one group was engaged in moulding the 'salt-dough' with Rumeshi, the remaining children a very creative art project ‘tissue painting’ with Yan Mei.  Using watercolour paints, everyday ‘facial’ tissues as the materials, (no brushes involved) children created beautiful forms of ‘dipped’ art that you can view within our gallery. The finished product will come to you, on Friday.  The art has been hung out to dry, for now!

Lunch was a chatty affair, as usual, some taking longer than others to eat and chat!  Rest time followed and while we asked the children to have a little nap, we couldn’t help smiling when we heard those giggles, whisperings and the playing of ‘musical beds’.  It’s amazing how one, who was last seen in Cot No. 1, suddenly appeared in Cot No. 5 in the instant that the supervising adult took to turn around! 

Today’s story after lunch was about ‘television’ in response to the request that we had last week.   Aunty May began the narration by talking about the inventors, who collectively contributed to the creation of a television set.  Those five (FYI) are:

1. Paul Kipkow, who in 1884 created a rotating disk which was the foundation of mechanical television systems;

2. Charles Jenkins – who developed a device to electrically transmit images and pictures.

3. The Englishman John Logie Baird -  who invented the first practical model of the mechanical television and transmitted the first image of a human face in 1925.

4. Alan Campbell-Swinton -  who developed the cathode ray tube

5. Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the dissector tube (based on the cathode ray tube) which is still the foundation of all electronic television sets.

While the children may not be able to recall all that we presented, our idea was to put across to them, that the television sets we use today, came about as a result of several inventions coming together;  not all at once, but collectively those inventions enable us to see life and fantasy in vivid colour, from the comfort of our homes.

The afternoon activity areas saw the children engaged in threading shapes of animals, playing ‘pizza-twist’ and building the world, through a puzzle!

Sport, and this week, it’s all about Rugby!  We chose rugby as it is a robust game, played by children of all ages worldwide!  Playing rugby, requires multiple skills, quick thinking, agility, speed and sportsmanship, not to mention, team spirit!  Today was about presenting the founder of rugby, William Webb Ellis, the manner in which he took the ball in his hands and ran with it, during a (no-hands) soccer game.  Also mentioned; the period that this happened – 18’ hundreds (association of 10’s and 100’s from the Montessori decimal system), the shape of the Rugby ball, likened to the ‘ellipsoid’ from our geometry cabinet, its dissimilarity from the ‘ovaloid’ which we likened to an egg (now that, led to an entirely different ‘side-bar’ chat, about how we like our eggs and the consensus was that we all liked this amazingly versatile food item!) ending with the children being presented with a rugby ball.  After experiencing the ‘feel’ of a rugby ball it was off to the studio for some passing around and then we did the first of our planned drills.  Darting zig-zag runs ending with a sprint for a ‘touchdown’.  Now our sound man let us down and we failed to deliver the soundbite of a stadium going ‘bananas’ when a touchdown takes place so we compensated for that, with our own form of cheering.  The children enjoyed the drill and ended the day with 10 minutes of free play in the garden.

Summing up, a good start to this week! 

Thank you, for enrolling your child in Week Two of Summer Slam 2016, please remember that all children should wear their ‘official' Summer Slam T-shirts on Friday for the group picture!  We will hand over the T-shirts to the new joiners, tomorrow.

Click here for the gallery.

Rumeshi & Yan Mei together with, May and Dennis