showed the children how to do Japanese origami. She brought her .... Making
bird seed cakes was a fun project especially when the Butterflies asked what.
First News January 2014
Dear Parents, First of all we would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to all our parents who took the time and energy to come in and share their culture during our International Week. It was a blast, kids and teachers had a great time, we’ve learnt many new things about our new and old friends. We do hope you found the Parent-Teacher meetings useful and informative. The teachers and children worked extremely hard since September as you could see in the individual portfolios. Thank you for attending the meetings, if you have any questions or concerns in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our school is a member of the Bake Books International School Book Club, We set up the online ordering form for this Spring—the deadline is Friday, 28th of February. If you wish to place an order or would like to browse through the catalogues, please visit this link: http://parentpay.bakerbooks.co.uk/clubs/KIDHUN1
The books will arrive within 2 weeks time after the deadline.
Check Out Our Important Notes on Page 13!
Kind regards, The First Steps and Kids’ Kiosk Team
1
Happy Hedgehogs Dear Parents, This month two new little Hedgehogs, Linus and Flora joined us. They are both from Austria and they are settling in just fine. January is the month when normally nothing much happens as everybody is tired after festive December. Not in our class!!!! We had International week and Parent-Teacher meetings this month. I must say both of them were a big success. In our class we have about 10 different nationalities, French, Italian, English, Moroccan, Turkish, and so on. Parents were so happy to volunteer and tell the children stories about their own countries, present food and show pictures and music. On the first day of International week we had Mounia, Soraya’s mum who brought some Moroccan breakfast for the children. The pancake and the sweet tea went down very well. After that we listened and danced to some traditional music and the children experienced some henna hand painting as well. On the second day Tomoki’s mum showed the children how to do Japanese origami. She brought her two daughters who were helping our little Hedgehogs fold the paper just the right way. The children managed to make a little dog, flower and a toy which swirled around. The following day Takuto’s mum who is also from Japan read a lovely Japanese children's story and let us try a delicious traditional sweet. We had Arthur’s mum from England and Malik’s mum from Germany presenting a traditional children's story with lots of pictures.
2
The last day Dolli’s mum showed us how to celebrate Mardi Gras a carnival in New Orleans. Yellow, green and purple balloons filled in our classroom. Children were eating gorgeous cupcakes and they made very colourful masks. Thank you very much to all the parents who could manage to come in and do a little bit of a presentation of their country of origin. It really spiced up our everyday life in the kindergarten. Thank you again and looking forward to seeing you in February. Csilla, Edina, Sherri
3
Friendly Frogs Dear Parents, January began with a trip to the playhouse to celebrate Peti's Birthday. All the children had a wonderful time and were thoroughly exhausted from all the running, climbing, sliding and jumping - what a great place! International week was a big success. Rashed brought some delicious home -made Egyptian sweets. We discovered that crocodiles and camels live in Egypt. We learnt a funny song about Alice the Camel and also the 'Along Came Mr Crocodile' song. Aoi's Mum introduced Japan with a fun traditional game where the children had to place the features on a face while blindfolded - see photo! We made Japanese flags and ate home-made rice-balls with fish snacks and sushi seaweed that the children were very interested to discover! Miri's Dad introduced Germany with some typical German cartoon characters. A game of 'Freeze' where the children danced to some German children’s songs. The class also designed their own versions of the German flag. We enjoyed some fresh pretzels and we all got to take huge cones (Schultüte) home with Haribo and Kinder chocolate inside! Lily and her mum introduced America with a wonderful floor puzzle of the states of America that the children put together. They had fun trying on an 'Uncle Sam' American hat and were thrilled with their bag of American candy! Friday was our Hungarians' turn and Korina showed us the different breeds of Hungarian dogs and we discussed which one we would like to take home. Lujzi looked so pretty in her traditional dress and Flávia showed her Hungarian doll and gave a 4
Hungarian colouring sheet to all her friends. We enjoyed a special breakfast of pogácsa, Turo Rudi and szölő drink. Thank you very much for all your support this week - it has been very special for all of us!Orsi joined our group on the 15th January. The kids have bonded very fast with her and it's great to have her on our team! She would like to take this opportunity to introduce herself:
My name is Orsolya Kenessei and I am very happy that I can join the team of First Steps Kindergarten. I’ve been working with young children for almost 8 years and had wonderful work experiences in Hungary and the UK. After college I moved to London where I worked for 2 years in one of the city’s leading preschools as a teaching assistant. After coming back to Hungary I worked in English-Hungarian Kindergartens as an English speaking class teacher. My philosophy as a teacher is to respect and appreciate each child as a unique individual with various learning styles and personalities. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. We are looking forward to February in our theme we will be exploring is the five senses. We will celebrate Valentines day on the 14th and please remember there will be a ski break between the 17th - 21st February. Perhaps we will finally enjoy some snow! We would like to ask ALL our Frogs to join us at 9am! This would allow the group to all benefit from circle time and enjoy some play time before activities begin. With thanks, Mary, Orsi and Bori
5
Clever Owls Dear Parents, The very first monthly Owl newsletter of the New Year January 2014. We started this year with a lovely Christmas break, everybody was fresh and well rested getting back to routine was quick. We had two new members of the class, Oscar and Haru, then Oscar moved on to the Butterfly group after a few days, to suit his development better. So a big welcome to Haru, who is a lovely Japanese girl, very clever indeed. Haru and her parents just moved to Budapest from Japan, so it is a big change for her. There are 11 Owls now all together. This month we paid extra attention to how much the Owls have been developing since last September. They are doing really well indeed. Very proud of them. At the same time we kept on going with all the activities, learning the numbers up to 10 so far, more Jolly Phonics, lovely art projects with Bori and all the other ones as well.
6
We had international week also with exciting countries to visit, making country flags, origami, food tasting, music and colouring sheets for example. Please don't forget to set up your appointment for the Parent - teacher conference if your child is with us since last Autumn, either via email or in person. Thank you.
Have a wonderful New Year. Suzy and Attila
7
Butterflies Dear Parents, This month has been an excellent start to 2014. It started a little bitter sweetly though, the Butterflies were sad to say goodbye to a good friend: Zsoli was off to Big School! But they were also very very excited about it especially since they got to hear all about Big School because Maksim and Benjamin visited for a couple of days! It was lovely to see them again and to hear their stories too. We are very glad that they would accompany Zsoli to Big School and help him settle in there. Tons of good luck to Zsoli in his big new adventure. Our new unit is called Making Sense of It! Our first theme was and explored symmetry and distance. Making bird seed cakes was a fun project especially when the Butterflies asked what kind of plant grew from 'birdseed'! Now they are eagerly looking everyday to see if the birds are eating their cakes or not. We have 9 new members to the Butterflies: 4 new fish, 2 turtles (all still to be named! Suggestions are all very welcome!). The Butterflies were happy and excited to go pick out the fish and a turtle from the pet store on our first trip of the month. Agi kindly gave us a tank and a second little turtle. 8
4 fish plus 2 turtles well that makes only 6.... so we would like to give a huge welcome to our three new Butterflies who joined us this month: Waka, Oscar and Dovydas! We really hope they will have a wonderful time with the Butterflies. A massive thank you to Sateo, Yuko and Chika who visited the Butterflies for a delicious Japanese cookery class. The Butterflies had a lot of fun making onigiri, tasting real green tea and trying various Japanese sweets. Also a big thank you for Joanne and Alicja for preparing and presenting a lovely lesson on Poland for us. A very Happy Birthday to Geri who turned 7 at the begining of January. All in all it was a fantastic first month back and here's to an amazing fun and learning filled 2014! Thank you, Kenneth and Cikra.
9
Grasshoppers Dear Parents, The Grasshoppers had a lot of fun and kept really busy in the first few weeks of 2014. They welcomed back the New Year by celebrating a few weeks of winter. Our first week back we went with the Butterflies to Mammut's Pet Store and bought several fish for the Butterflies' tank and a little turtle as well. Because our main topic was birds in the winter, we also bought a variety of bird seeds for the little birds. The Grasshoppers have been painting their bird feeders from recycled cans and soon they will get to take them home and put them outside so they can see the birds feed from them. They also made bird feeders with the Butterflies and we took them on our Friday trip to the local forest and each Grasshopper got to put a bird feeder up on a tree. Then we walked up to the top of the forest and enjoyed our snacks and the view. On our way back we observed the bird feeders and some birds already ate from them.
10
During the past three weeks we also spent some time getting to know the calendar and learning how many days are in a month and year and how many weeks in a month and a year. We also discussed how the calendar works and used math's to calculate how many days until February and how many days in a year. Last week Friday we walked to the local playground with the Butterflies and enjoyed the fresh winter air and listened for birds on our walk back to the kindergarten. Winter has finally arrived! Please make sure your Grasshopper has proper winter gear with them every day. We ask you kindly to put ski pants, snow suits, hats, scarves, gloves on your child's hook and only their change of clothes, Jiu Jitsu and Ballet clothes in their boxes. If you haven't already done so please bring your Grasshopper a water bottle so they can drink at Vasas, Jiu Jitsu, Ballet and during the day. Judit and Andi
11
es
Not t n a t r Impo
Valentine’s Day 2014 On Friday, 14th of February Please wear something Red and/or Pink for the day. SKI BREAK 2014 Between February 17-21th We offer Ski Break—Duty for further information please contact Branca
CARNIVAL!!! On Friday, 28th of February in the Classrooms—please make sure your little one(s) have a fancy dress to put on plus his/her ordinary outfit. Thank you!
12
