HJIS Sendai Aoba Class Blogs 2025-26: Weeks 10 and 11

Hello, Orca Class families!

Morning & Afternoon Meetings

Our morning meetings this week were so engaging and fun! First, we guessed and talked about our 8 classroom rules to guide them throughout the day. 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, last Wednesday, we had our Fire Drill and talked about the importance of being safe and quick in case of fire in school. Our friends knew immediately what to do when they heard the fire alarm.

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. This week was also our Show and Tell week. It was wonderful our friends' different objects and photos about seeds and plants from Blue group from last week and first letter of their name for Red group for this week . Our friends shared their favorite book, picture, a craft, toys and even a video! We had so much fun guessing the first letter of our friends' names and got a chance to touch and feel it. We ended our day through reading a storybook and singing a goodbye song.

Language & Literacy

Pre-K

These are the activities we did from last week to this week. To jumpstart our Literacy time , we started talking about our Raz-Kids book entitled, "Where? and Too Many Leaves ". We described the pictures and read aloud the words with everyone. Then, we reviewed phonics Rr and Gg through activities like singing a song, reading an alphabet Raz-Kids books and doing related worksheets.Ou Pre-K friends are doing well every discussion time. They begin to learn how to reason out and make meaningful connections based on the story. We aimed to enhance not only their literacy facet but also to lengthen their attention span and enhanced their focus and concentration which is essential to develop their skills and bodies holistically. In addition, we also learned about some sight words to help us in reading.

Kinder

These are the activities we did for this week. To jumpstart our Literacy time , we started talking about our Raz-Kids book entitled, "Cranberries and Bees Feed Me". We described the pictures and read aloud the sentences. We also asked them to read one sentence per each child to enhance their confidence and reading fluency. Then, we talked about word families -op and -ag through meeting a friend Doraemon to introduce our lesson, singing a song, listening to word family stories, doing a worksheet and making a craft to enhance our understanding on word families, and did some related Raz-Kids worksheets. In addition, we also learned about some sight words to help us in reading.

Maths

Pre-K

For Week 10, our Pre-K students started practicing comparative words of "more" and "less" and looked at two different groups of objects and identified which group had "more" and which had "less". Some students used the strategy of counting the objects while others estimated from the size of the group to come to an answer. Both strategies are important to have as sometimes we do not have the time to count each object in a group and can use our intuition to have a rough estimate of which has "more".

In Week 11, the Pre-K students learned about matching and sorting. We practiced matching and sorting various objects based on their pattern, color, size, category and more. It was good seeing their ideas of how they organized and made groups of similar objects and the reasoning behind why they chose to make certain groups based on their criteria.

Kinder

In Week 10, Kinder students continued practicing subtraction questions. We learned of different

ways to represent a group of numbers (pictorially or with physical objects) and manipulated the objects by removing them or crossed-out the number that was being subtracted to come to our

answers. For example, for one of the days, we made subtraction bracelets with 20 beads and used them like an abacus to solve subtraction equations.For the following week, Kinder students learned about fact families in Week 11. It was a combination of their previous experience with addition and subtraction and how three numbers can be related through different addition and subtraction equations. It is good practicefor them to do mental calculations and to quickly come to solutions for single digit addition and subtraction.ve the beads along the string of the bracelet to come to the answer.

Topic Exploration

Last week, our Orca class talked, "All About Plants: Flowers". First, we read the book about "Why do Flowers Grow?" to jumpstart our topic. Then, we had activities such as making a flower mask using paper plates, creating a flower mosaic from the flowers they had picked at the park, and making a flower garden through cutting and pasting to instill creativity and imagination as they hone their fine motor skills. We also used some of this time to practice for our performances and drew our favorite part for Sports Day.

This week, we talked about insect/animal relationships specifically mutualism, predation and parasitism. We did a butterfly craft using toilet paper roll for mutualism, a collaborative activity for making a spider's web for predation and "My dog has Ticks/Parasites sticker activity" for parasitism. We can't wait to unfold and discover this topic in school through hands-on activities and explorations.

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.