The second topic of the first term is 

                           The Colours of the Rainbow

Research has shown that children as young as 4 months old have preferences for colours, which proves how important colours are in a child's life. The aim of this topic is to help children become more aware of the colours around them.  They learn to recognize and name these colours. We shall focus on the 3 primary colours: red, yellow and blue, and then create colours from them.  The children shall learn that by mixing these colours we can create any other colour and that one colour can have many different shades. Colour helps children to express themselves.  It is a wonderful safe field where children develop their self-affirmation.  Colour effects our mood and also promotes learning and creativity.  Creative thinking leads to creative problem solving.  I am including a link where you can find some colour games the children will enjoy playing while learning. http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/preschool/ngames/colors.htm

      We started with the colour red (ahmar) the first colour of the rainbow.  First I introduced the 'a' sound.  It is very important for the children to be able to recognize and identify the sound of a letter.  This is called phonological awareness.  Phonological awareness skills are important in order to develop good reading skills. Having good phonological awareness skills means that a child is able to manipulate sounds and words, or “play” with sounds and words.

      Then I introduced them to the shape of the letter.  The children looked for the letter 'a' in our story books.  This helped them realise that they could also find it in the middle or in the end of a word.  This helped them become aware of individual sounds in a spoken word, which is the most difficult level of phonological awareness.  Phonological awareness helps children become prepared to learn how letters and sounds go together into words.  This makes it much easier for someone to learn to read and write.

 Writing letter 'a' - using tactile letters and sand. 

We wrote letter 'a' in the air and on each others back.

    For a tactile experience, we put some sand in the paint before painting the letter 'a' (ahmar).

Writing 'a' on the white board

    We learned two Maltese rhymes about the colour Red (Ahmar) and we are learning another two in English, The Rainbow Colours song and The Butterfly Colours Song.  (Please go to page: 'Rhymes and Actions songs'.)

   The children were asked to look for red objects from around the classroom and we grouped the objects together.  

          We learned two Maltese rhymes about the colour Red (Ahmar) and we are learning another ryhme in English called The Butterfly Colours Song.  (Please go to page: 'Rhymes and Actions songs'.)

        We cut out pictures of red objects which we used to make a big collage.  I hung the collage on our English Wall with the caption: 'I see red.'

       One of the Maltese Rhymes we learned is called 'Ghandi huta hamra, hamra', therefore to extend learning we had a creative project corresponding to this rhyme.  This week each child used crayons to colour the water in the fish bowl and a handprint in red paint to make the fish.  We also explored the colour further by  painting and printing in red.

                                           

        We have started a rainbow painting and shall be adding colours as we go along.  This week, we painted the first colour which is red.

      During Abacus, this week we learned about size: big / small.  We learned the concept of big, smaller, smallest / small, bigger, biggest  etc...

      We also started learning the number 2, value and recognition.  We also learned how to write it.