Monday 31 October 2016

ENGLISH UPDATE – Week of October 24th


READING:
This week’s morning message was about the weather changing, and the need to start wearing warmer clothing.  We introduced the word “I” versus the letter “i”, and we also introduced the word “is”. 
Students are now encouraged to attempt to read short words by saying the sound each letter makes and connecting the letters.  Masha’Allah some students are already reading words such as: sat, sit, nap, tan etc.
SPEAKING:
Along with our morning announcements, students now get the chance to talk about their day with Rocky or Slippy.  We have started sending our class pets Rocky and Slippy home with the SK1 and SK2 students.  Once the student brings the class pets back to school, they get to tell us about all the things they did with the class pet at their home.  Having the students take home these class pets instills in them a sense of responsibility. 
PHONICS:
-        This week we reviewed our letters and worked on finishing off our phonics book number 1.  Insha’Allah we’ll be starting book 2 next week.
COMPREHENSION:
-        This week we read the story Aaron’s Hair and we talked about FICTION vs. NON-FICTION, SETTING, and MAIN CHARACTER.  The students were able to retell the story in their own words masha’Allah.
COMING UP...
-        Book 2 letters Cc, Kk, Rr.
-        Reading short words made up of the letters taken so far SATIPN.
-        Rhyming words continued.
-        Use of descriptive words to describe objects in the classroom.

-        Good manners words and phrases. 


Tuesday 25 October 2016

French Class from teacher Nadia

Assalam Alikum Dear Abraar School's parents,

My name is Nadia El Ajjouri, I am your child's French teacher. For the past month and half, I did the following things with the class:

- Introducing oneself ( Je m' appelle..........)  - Greeting expressions ( Bonjour, Au revoir) - Comment ça va ( bien, mal, comme- çi comme- ça) - French Alphabet -  Colors  -  Numbers from 1 to 10 - Body parts( tête, épaules, genoux ,orteils, yeux,nez, bouche, oreilles).

SincerlyNadia El Ajjouri

Monday 24 October 2016

SK1 Weekly Update

Assalamu alaikum everyone.

What a week!  It was a week full of indoor recesses and sick kids.  Unfortunately I had to be away from the class for two days because of my own children catching this yucky stomach flu that's been going around.  Rest assured that we are doing as much as we possibly can to disinfect all the popular surfaces where germs might like to congregate.  We made lots of du'aa for our sick friends, and really missed having them with us in the class.


SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT OUR KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM:  Kindergarten learning is all about learning through play, and creating meaningful learning experiences.  In our classrooms we strive to implement the new Ontario curriculum strategies and we are trying our best to keep the learning environment fun, exciting, challenging, and motivating for the children.  We encourage the children to explore, ask questions, and seek answers either through experimentation or communication.  So although it may seem that we do a lot of play in our classroom, it's actually learning opportunities disguised as play.  For more information on the new Ontario Kindergarten curriculum please visit NEW KINDERGARTEN PROGRAM .

Here is what we managed to accomplish this past week:

LANGUAGE:
 - Reading story I Am Kind.
- Writing the letter Nn in our phonics books.
- Brainstorming for words that have the Nn sound in them.
- Learning the correct formation of the letter Nn using a story of the Nn mommy.
- Talking about acts of kindness and how we can be kind to each other.  Students had a chance to orally tell us about times they were kind to others masha'Allah.
- We read some stories and made some predictions about them masha'Allah.

MATH:
- Working on the number 5-five.  
- Students had a nice little introduction to addition when they were adding up their scores at the end of the Bean Bag Toss game.  This game had many purposes: improving gross motor skills, developing strategies that work, recording score, and adding the score.
- Patterning AABB patterns and thinking of other ways to create patterns using only two attributes.
- Voting and learning about majority vs. minority.
- Learning the ordering numbers 1st, 2nd, 3rd and how we use these terms when we are saying the date.  Example) October 21 becomes October Twenty First instead of October twenty one.

SCIENCE:
- What happens to food when it is left outside of the fridge? Was a question that brought many answers! "it explodes" , "it becomes yucky", "it can make you sick", "it turns black".  So we decided to conduct our very own science experiment to see what happens to some grapes and carrots when left outside the fridge.  We left some magnifying glasses, and white paper so students can document what they see.

ISLAMIC STUDIES:
- We learned the sunan (plural of sunnah) of Friday.  They are: wearing beautiful clean clothes, taking a bath, clipping nails, and smelling nice.  Please help us implement these sunnas by encouraging your children to come to school dressed a little special on Fridays.
- Why is Friday special? Because Allah swt sent the Quraan down to prophet Muhammad on a Friday. We discussed how Allah swt sent the Quraan to prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
- How many names does Allah swt have?  99 names we listened to a nasheed with all of Allah swt's names and counted them as we were listening.  We learned how the word Allah is written in both Arabic and English.
- The class did an excellent job making pretend wudu' and praying thuher in the classroom this past Friday.  Masha'Allah everyone was very focused!  
- We learned how to make tasbeeh and what happens every time we say subhanallah, alhamdulillah, Allahu Akbar.

GYM:
- Relay races this week included dribbling a basketball, rolling on a mat and hopping on one foot and two feet.  Students also had to show cooperation by completing a race with all of their team members carrying a mat to the finish line.

ART:
- This week our art focus was on rhythm, and we sang the song tala'al-badru alaina following the rhythm of a drum.  The kids were clapping along to the rhythm.  * Art is divided into: visual arts, drama, and rhythm and movement. 

Looking forward to another week of adventures in SK1 insha'Allah.

Safiah Aghliw
SK1 Teacher





Monday 17 October 2016

Week of October 10th



Assalamu alaikum!  We had a great week last week. 

Here is what we've been working on:

READING:
The class did an amazing job reading the short story I CAN.

I can see.  I can taste.  I can touch.  I can hear.  I can smell. Alhamdulillah.

SPEAKING:
Every morning we practice our oral communication by taking turns sharing special news, or announcements.  Students are learning to use the correct tense when speaking about the past, present, or future. 

PHONICS:
-         Vowels: a-e-i-o-u sometimes y.  Through the songs “apples and bananas”.
-         -Special focus on the letter Ii and its correct formation.
-         -The letter Pp and its correct formation and sound.
-         -An introduction to the letter Nn.
-         -Rhyming words, students should know that rhyming words sound the same.  We read a song with many rhyming words that the class was able to identify.

WRITING:
-         -Writing the letter Ii, and Pp in our phonics books.

COMPREHENSION:
-         -Reading the story Mmm Cookies by Robert Munsch.  Students were able to retell the story in correct sequence, and they were able to predict what would happen next mashallah.

COMING UP...
-         Letter Nn writing.
-         Reading short words made up of the letters taken so far SATIPN.
-         Rhyming words continued.
-         Use of descriptive words to describe objects in the classroom.
-         Good manners words and phrases.

-         Short story: I AM KIND.

MATHEMATICS
-Working on patterning skills. AABBAABB, and ABCABC patterns.
- Learning the correct way to write the number 4-four.

SCIENCE
-Talking about the Earth’s rotation around itself and how it produces night and day, and how the Earth rotates around the sun and this produces the four seasons.  (Students were interested in this topic so we made it into a topic of discussion, with the class globe as a visual).

ISLAMIC STUDIES
-Doing good deeds to please Allah swt.
-Talking about Jannah, and the story of Prophet Adam (AS).
- Learning the steps of wudu’ and salat. 

ART
-Learning the art of painting using water colours.  Learning to draw by following step by step instructions.

GYM
-Learning different types of movement.
-Forming teams, and learning the process of relay races.




Friday 7 October 2016

SK1 Update Week 3 and 4

Assalamu alaikum!  

We have been in SK1 for 20 days now masha'Allah.  Every day has been a really busy learning adventure for us.

Here is what we have been working on:


LANGUAGE

Phonics:
-   The correct formation of the letters Tt, and Ii.  The sound of this letter and the action that goes along with this letter.  Students wrote the letters Tt, and Ii in their phonics book.

Reading:
-   Students are reading the following poem and focusing on high-frequency words (the) & (and).

The leaves are falling down.
The leaves are falling down.
Red, yellow, green, and brown.
The leaves are falling down.

Oral Communication:
-      Every day students enter the class and share their special announcements using the sentence “my special announcement is….”.
-      
    We also talked about our five senses, and what Allah swt has given us the ability to do with each of these senses.

Vocabulary:
-          -The names of the 12 months.
-          -The names of the days of the week.
-         - The weather conditions.
-          -Names of clothing articles i.e. shirt, pants, socks, hair clip, head band etc.

High frequency words:
-the 
-and

Insha’Allah we will be learning the letters Pp, and Nn next week and we will also be working on our “I can” booklet.




MATHEMATICS

We have worked on the numbers:

0 zero
1 one
2 two

We are also working on extending AABB patterns.  

Next week we will be working on subitising using fingers, dice, and dominoes.


SCIENCE/ISLAMIC STUDIES

Talking about the wonders of Allah swt and how he has blessed us with our five senses, and what the function of each of these senses is.  We experimented with our sense of touch, and insha'Allah next week we will be using our sense of taste and smell to see how we feel about  different flavours and scents.

Our character theme for the month of October is "KINDNESS", please help your child with some new ideas of how they can be kind to their peers in the classroom.  We talked about the hijra and are learning the song tala'al badru alaina.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Every day we incorporate physical activity into our classroom either through yoga, games of Simon Says or during our two scheduled gym classes.  This week we spend both gym classes out in the yard where the students climbed, pushed each other on the spinning climber or worked out their hand and arm muscles on the monkey bars.

ART

Student explored symmetry by making leaves out of a leaf outline and a folded paper, while others worked on tracing triangles to make characters.  We also used our writing centre to write letters of love to our moms and dads and family members.

QURAN

In quraan the students are learning surat At-Takathur.  Please help your child review ayas 1-4 of this sura.