On the fourth week we talked about people who help us.

Aisha is a policewoman and she is telling us about her work.

 Julian is a firefighter and he is explaining to us what he does when there is a fire.

Zsolt is a construction worker and he is telling us how he goes about building houses.

Zack is a doctor and he is explaining to us how he helps her patients get better.

Julia is a vet and she is demonstrating how she helps animals get better when they are unwell.

Jacob is a chef and he is explaining to us that his job is to cook delicious food for the people who visit his restaurant.

      This week we practiced our visual memory skills.  Visual Memory is the ability to remember for immediate recall the characteristics of a given object or form. If we have trouble inputting information into our short term memory, we can’t process it into our long term memory for permanent storage. Children with poor visual memory may have difficulty remembering what a word looks like or fail to recognize the same word on a different page. They may also take longer copying assignments because they can’t retain information long enough to transfer it from the board to their page.

The children here are looking at a sequence and repeating it from memory.  They are encouraged to observe, remember and recall.

    

      This week, we started learning the Maltese alphabet, starting with the letter 'j' (jien).  We will be learning recognition, sound and shape of the letters.

      A multi sensory teaching method is the most effective teaching method.Most teaching  is done using either sight or hearing (visual or auditory sensations). Visual: that which you see / Auditory: that which you hear.

     Using a multi sensory teaching approach means helping a child to learn through more than one of the senses.  Using the sense of  touch  will give the child’s brain tactile  memories to hang on to, as well as the visual and auditory ones. When teaching letters we use flashcards so the children can see the letters and we teach them the sound which they can hear. We also use tactile letters which is just one method of the multi-sensory approach to letter recognition. Tracing the letter with a finger or shaping the letter out of play dough is an example of how to help our children to better understand and remember the letter later. 

    Many pre-school children do not have the fine motor skills for handwriting activities. The use of tactile letters also helps in  teaching  writing formation. We write letters in, for example, sand and use finger paint or textured paint, glitter, sand and collage to make letters.  We do "air writing" making letters in the air with large arm movements. This, together with many activities that help children develop their fine motor skills and tripod grasp, will lead to the final step, which is writing on paper.

 Writing letter 'j' - using tactile letters.

 Putting glitter on letter 'j' for a tactile experience.

Writing 'j' in sand...

....and finally writing it on the whiteboard.

       Helping develop our fine motor skills using pegs:  we use the same three fingers that we use to hold a a crayon for colouring.  When this skill is fully developed the children will be able to properly hold a pencil during writing.

      Some of maths activities this week....adding 1 more

Some photos taken during a P.E. activity.

Do you like our Marble Paintings?  We had a great time making them!

        This is our Halloween Activity.