HJIS Sendai Aoba Class Blogs 2025-26: Week 1

Hello, Orca Class families!

We started our new school year as Pre-K and a Kinder class this week with excited students entering a familiar room with new decorations, arrangements and materials. As we mentioned in the Class name introductions, just like orcas, we believe that our students are intelligent, playful and highly sociable. We hope that the students will become interested in and learn more about orcas over this school year.

Morning & Afternoon Meeting

Our morning meetings this week were so much fun! First, we talked about our 8 classroom rules to guide them throughout the day. Our favorite rule that we often emphasized was "Do Your Best". Since our Orca friends are the oldest age group in school, our friends knew that they should show good example in class. We also instill them that we are kind, caring, gentle and smart who make good choices and use kind words. Then, we started singing good morning song wherein we formed a circle and danced together as we say hello to everyone. It was such a joy seeing them laughing and holding each others' hands to begin our day. It was followed by checking our calendar time, assigning class jobs, doing a movement song and sharing about our whereabouts through our Class Dojo photos. In addition, we talked about our new learning centres and how to be able to play properly. Everyone was so cooperative in making sure we follow the rules in each centre.

In the afternoon, we read a storybook and had mini discussion through asking WH-questions like why, what, where, when and how in order to enhance their story comprehension and enrich their vocabulary words. We ended our day through singing a goodbye song and of course, got our time to choose our stickers as a reward.

Language & Literacy

Pre-K/Kinder

To jumpstart our Literacy time , we recalled our phonics through singing songs. Then, we talked about doing our Raz-Kids book. Every week, we shared that we will be having an assigned book that we can read over the weekend and then, we will discuss about in the classroom. Moreover, we had Sight Word Time wherein, we introduced sight word as part of our reading practice and did a related a worksheet to help us remember how to spell and write it.

In addition, we had paired review I Spy game with Pre-K and Kinder friends helping each other to find out the phonics. For other days, we did a separate games to help them enhance their letter and sound recognition.

For Kinder, we had CVC Word Sorting game and Boom-Clap- Sound game too wherein they do some hand actions and listened to the sound and grabbed the letter in front of them. They were quite competitive and were so focused as they really wanted to win the game against their friends. In the end, it was a friendly game.

For Pre-K, we had beginning interactive beginning sound game and Phonics hopscotch wherein they jump on the colored mats and grabbed the letter on the floor. It was engaging for them as they get to move their bodies while recognizing the letter sounds.

Maths

Pre-K / Kinder

This week, our focus was review of numbers between 1 to 20. We started by singing some counting songs that we used throughout the week.

Our first math lesson of the new school year was a combined cooperative activity between Pre-K and Kinder students. We did a numbers BINGO game where the students matched the number chosen by one of the students to their own BINGO card. They would then trace the numbers on their board. It was a cooperative activity between the Kinder and Pre-K friends as they took turns and helped one another with number recognition.

We did a matching game for numbers between 1 to 12. We matched the cards with the number to a card with the number of items. We took turns between each of the students in a big circle.

We also did a matching cookies game between the number of cookie chocolate chips and to the number on the cookies in the jar. We then practiced some number tracing and coloring to match the number.

The students really seemed to enjoy the coloring by number activity that we did on Friday at the end of the week.

Topic Exploration

This week was truly a memorable one as we delved into getting to know our Orca sea animal. Our friends were wondering what Orcas can do and why it was our chosen animal. And so, we shared to them some fun activities that we did over the week and explained that Orcas are intelligent, playful and highly sociable. Just like them, they are bright and eager to learn and play in school and can mingle well with other age group harmoniously. We started our week through decorating our First Day hat to celebrate our first day in school. Then we did Music activity wherein the kids kept the balloon s floating with gentle and smooth movements just like moving underwater while the music (songs of the Sea by Lynn Kleiner) was being played.Also, we did a cutting an dpasting of orca craft and made a puppet orca through painting it well using black paint. This week was truly a memorable one as our friends would even share that they love being in Orca class! Our next topic will be All About Spring. This topic will be related for our first Show and Tell nextweek. We can't wait to listen to our friends' stories about what they love about Spring.

Free Play

Here are some more pictures of friends playing together in the classroom, in the Big Room, at the park, and enjoying other topics, events and activities at school.