YEP and Painting Feelings

This we the class started to recover from the flu epidemic and on Friday we had everyone in attendance for the first time in several weeks. We also had some visitors; the IB inspectors came on Monday and joined the class for some painting. The kids enjoyed speaking with them, telling them what they were painting and whether it was happy, sad or angry.

At the start of the activity we also looked at some example paintings and placed emotion stickers on them to show how they made us feel. The 'angry' painting got a lot of 'happy' stickers, which was interesting. We talked about why they put them there and the kids explained that it was because it made them feel excited.


Our inquiry wall is growing steadily. We have started watching the videos from last years YEP and noting the costumes, music and dances that were used for them. soon we will begin planning what we will do this year (some of the kids are already absolutely set on dressing as Elsa and singing songs from Frozen, but that probably wont work for the whole class).

We have also been discovering that various everyday objects can be turned into instruments (there are a couple of videos on Seesaw). Soon we will begin making our own.

Back to School

The kids came back to school well rested after their holiday (except for one or two of our more far ranging travelers, who were suffering from a bit of jet lag) and were excited to catch up with everyone that they hadn't seen in a while.

There were a few changes to our regular schedule in the first week back; we met our new music teacher, whose classes will be held on Monday instead of Tuesday, and I ran the P.E. lesson for the first time (homeroom teachers are taking P.E. classes for the rest of the year while we look for a new P.E. teacher).

We have made a bit of a start on our new unit, which is 'How We Express Ourselves'. We searched the library for books on art, music and dance. The kids chose a sing along Disney princess book, so we have be learning about rhymes from that.

We also realized, during morning circle time, that we needed a new calendar for 2019. Everyone wanted to make our own, so we voted on the pictures for each month and started colouring them with our paints. Whenever we paint these days, the kids are only given the primary colours, so they are getting very good at mixing their own greens, pinks, oranges, etc.

Next week we will start deciding what to do for our YEP performance and art display, make musical instruments to use in class and restart morning sharing time. We will also celebrate our January and December birthdays on Thursday.

Have a great long weekend. See you all on Tuesday!