K1 Panda Class

  Dear Panda Families,  We hope you are all keeping well and enjoying the warmer weather and sunshine! It was lovely to meet with so many of you last week for our Parent Teacher Conferences. We'd like to say a huge thank you to our Storytellers who have been visiting us in the morning and afternoon classes on Thursdays. The children love having guests in and are enjoying the stories you read to us. We look forward to welcoming more of you in the coming weeks! Our new Unit of Inquiry, 'How The World Works,' is getting off to a great start.  We are doing many scientific experiments, such as discovering how the water cycle works using 'clouds' made out of shaving foam to illustrate this and zip-loc bags filled with water. Rise Wise Dogs was a very successful incursion for the children, and many of the Pandas felt comfortable patting Mia, the kind and patient therapy dog who came to visit us! We learnt how to approach a dog by patting its back, and we learnt that dogs a...

Dear Parents and Caregivers, After the Lunar New Year holiday, we enjoyed sharing the story “Holding the Lantern to Celebrate Lantern Festival (提灯闹元宵)” during our Chinese Assembly. This story helped the children learn about the origins and traditions of the Lantern Festival, serving as a wonderful conclusion to our Lunar New Year celebrations.    We also explored the story “Spring is Here” (春天來了), discussing the changes in nature during springtime. To reinforce this learning, we engaged the children with the rhyme "春天來了" (Spring is Here).  As we transition into our new Unit of Inquiry, "How the World Works," we introduced counting through the story “Counting From 1 to 10 (从一数到十).” The children are encouraged to practice their counting skills using one-to-one correspondence, which involves counting each object in a set once and only once with a single touch. For example, when a child touches each toy car in a row, counting aloud, “One, two, three, four…,” they are de...

After the Lunar New Year break, children came back to school ready to fully dive right back into learning through play! They will be gradually tuning into their new Unit of Inquiry   How the World Works . With the unit's subject focus on science and math, children will be engaging in lots of investigations and coming up with ideas about why and how things work in their environment. If you would like to learn more along with some concrete examples of what the learning might look like for your child, feel free to hear me walk through the unit in finer detail. It's a 4-min video and you may press the full screen button for a clearer view. Coming up this month, we have invited Curiosity Kids to Hillside for an incursion. Our children will be participating in a science lab where they will be little scientists experimenting with color mixing and bubble explotions! Stay tuned to the class blog to see what our little scientists and investigators are up to. We always encourage you to lo...

  Dear Panda Families,  Happy Lunar New Year of the Snake! We wish you and your families a healthy and happy year ahead! I look forward to seeing many of you next week for our Parent Teacher Conferences. If you would like to make an appointment to meet with me on Zoom, please contact the admin team directly before Friday 7th February:               Admin phone number:  2540 0066          Admin email address: kinder@hillside.edu.hk  It's brilliant to have the children back at school and hear about their adventures over the past week. We are getting back into the swing of our daily routine, and the Pandas have been exploring our learning engagements both indoors and outdoors during open play.   We are now starting our new Unit of Inquiry 'How The World Works.'  Our central idea and area of focus involves actively constructing new understandings of our world through observation and investigation....