Edelweiss School January 2016 Newsletter Update

Posted on February 10th, by AlphaBet Club in charity, edelweiss, newsletter. 1 Comment

There is a lot to look forward to as we step in the second half of the academic year! This second half is more rigorous as compared to the first half as we have more working days and a lot of teaching material. K5 children will concentrate on learning a lot of new things required for them to be ready to face the challenge in a new school when they leave us in end of April this year. K3 and K4 will face less difficult challenges than K5, they will also meet their goal and be ready to move on to the next level.  All children will take an assessment test in April and will be promoted to the next level depending on their performance.  January month had a lot of visitors following up the Christmas and the vacation holidays season.  Many visitors visited the school after it reopened and have been very happy to give away presents to the children.  Internal and external training for staff was conducted for their professional growth.

Attendance and Nutrition

No. of students enrolled: 142

Total number of meals served this month: 3,481

No. of school days: 18

No. of Students Enrolled (Day): 104

Average attendance: 95

Attendance in %: 91

No. of Students Enrolled (ASP): 38

Total breakfasts served: 1,702

Total lunches served: 1,606

Total meals served at ASP

(After School Program): 173

Total number meals served since opening at Edelweiss: 166,554

Total ABC-BB School partnership meals since opening: 273,321

Curriculum

Math

Learning the geometrical shapes in Mathematics class

K3 learned recognizing colors from the color chart placed in the classroom.  Through various activities they learned to identify colors, big versus small and learned to sort according to size through play dough activities. They also learned to count numbers from 1 to 20.

K4 learned to count numbers from 1 to100.  They practiced writing numbers from 1 to 20.  They learned about even and odd numbers and writing what comes before and after a given number.

K5 learned to write numbers from 1 to 100, writing number names of numbers from 1 to 20.  They also were taught about the place values of numbers like ones, tens, hundreds and thousands and they continued building on addition and subtraction concept of numbers.  Math Skill book was completed for sections related to the topics that were taught this month.

English

Assessment in progress in English class

K3 children learned sounds for letter h and s with story, action and formation and also learned to blend words. In Jolly Phonics Phase One – Rhythm and Rhyme activities included rhyming soup, rhyming books, rhyming bingo and listen to the beat.  Language enrichment happened with words like: work, play, happy, smile, sad, frown, tall and short.  For writing practice children were given to trace and write the letters in “My skill book”.

Reviewing tricky words with K5 children

A child reading the morning message

K4 learned the short sound of vowels and writing letters from a to z.  They also learned new tricky words like I, he, me and be and high frequency words like a, in, of, it, on and is.  In Jolly Phonics Phase One, activities like I spy, Bertha the Bus, silly soup, our sound box, voice sound, metal mike were completed for learning.

K5 learned the diagraph sound for ou.  They learned tricky words like – why, who, saw, only, live, have and like and high frequency words like – had, her, out, see, big, him and get.  In Jolly Phonics Phase One, activities like I spy, Bertha the Bus, silly soup, our sound box, voice sound, metal mike were completed for learning.

They also learned to read simple readers like: A park and I love my pets.  They also learned journal writing and wrote few sentences on “Fox”.

In workbook writing, they wrote the missing diagraphs and read the words with sounds of the diagraphs sh, ch, th, ou, qu and oi.  They were also able to circle the correct diagraph by looking at the pictures.

Local Language Kannada

K4 children learned the sounds of letters ka, kha, ga, gha, nya and ja.  They learned to write letters from a to ja in their class notebooks.

K5 children learned writing letters from aa to laa.  Also, they were able to write the missing letters in their class notebooks as a part of their class work.  This month children have progressed into writing two letter words in Kannada language.

Social Science

Children learning about community helpers

A child showing his friends the seven steps to hand wash in health and safety class

K3 children learned about community helpers like: Waiter, Waitress and Baker.  Under health and safety, children learned about dressing according to the weather

K4 children learned about Oceans.  Various lifeforms that exist in Oceans and topics on protecting Oceans were discussed with them.

K5 children learned about: Continents and Oceans.  Also, concept of day and night was explained to them.

Value Education

Character development through stories and actions

The theme of the month for character development for K3 was: cheerful and orderly.  Stories related to this were narrated by the teacher.

Theme of the month for K4 value education was: “Thank you”.  Stories like: Let us thank Teacher, Let us thank friends, Let us thank sister and the story of The Lion and the Mouse were read out to them.

K5 children read the simple readers which have a story.  The three books that children read were: A park, I love my pets and I like ice cream.  Children also drew images of the pictures from these books in their class notes.

Physical Education

Children are encouraged to play in our outdoor- roof top playground.  Every day, 15 minutes of physical activity is included in the schedule. This month too, children played outdoors whenever weather permitted.

Nutrition

Lunch time in Edelweiss

Well balanced nutritious meals were prepared and served every day.  Children were served with breakfast and lunch on all working days.  A total of 3,481 meals were served for our children

After School Program (ASP)

With a total of 38 students of grades 1, 2, 3 and 4 the ASP program is going very well.  This program helps the students in the evening with their homework which they bring back from their respective schools.  This program is a supportive program which assists our previous graduates to keep up with their school work.  This month the program ran for 17 days with a total attendance of 579 children.  ABC provides evening snacks in the ASP program.

Teacher and Support Staff Training

Training class on Hygiene by Founder, Mr. James

Signing a pledge

There were two training sessions for the teachers and support staff this month.  An organization called Enfold focusing on empowering children and adults to recognize resist and report sexual abuse conducted an awareness seminar for teachers and for school admins.

James, the founder of Building Blocks, conducted a full day seminar on “Hand wash and best practices of Hygiene for 2016” for the entire staff of Building Blocks.  This was a very informative seminar that covered many aspects of Hygiene.  Here’s what was discussed in this seminar –

The day started off with James asking few questions and he was looking mainly at the support staff for answers.  He asked what was the objective of Building Blocks India and all of the staff got this right – “Educating the underprivileged children”.  James moved on by telling the support staff that they played a very important role for the organization – which they were hesitant to accept!  The role of keeping the school clean and tidy, following best practices of hygiene, cooking food in a hygienic way are helping the children from not falling sick and reducing the mortality rate for the children under 5 years in India.

Hygiene has to be maintained by staff as well is what he emphasized. Things like washing hands with soap before cooking, after using toilets, maintaining personal hygiene – not touching their own face etc. while cooking was discussed and explained to them.  Also, since we provide children meals at our schools we need to take extra caution while cooking food too. He discussed about thorough cleaning of vegetables and keeping the kitchen utensils and kitchen counters clean to safeguard children’s health.  Also it was important to keep the school surroundings clean by using disinfectants, washing the toilets every 15 minutes with a disinfectant, washing children’s bibs frequently, changing hand towels at least once a day were discussed and had to be given equal importance as the education we provide in BB schools.

There is a huge risk, as the children come from slums and could contract illness in school and hence keeping the school clean will help us reduce the chances of death or acute illness contracted from school.  Seven steps to hand wash has to be taken seriously and has to be followed by all the staff and students.   In relation to this topic there were 3 videos shown to the staff

1. A village where newborn children were dying before 28 days of birth. Villagers had come to a belief that they had been cursed and hence the phenomenon was happening in all the houses.  But when NGO’s and medical team started working in the village they noticed a lot of unhygienic practices followed by the mother of the new born which was leading to death of children before they reached 28 days

2.  Another video showed about death rate of children below 5 years which again was related to the hygiene practice.

3.  Famous celebrity talking about washing hands with soap before eating and after using toilets to prevent sickness was shown to reduce mortality rate

James, mentioned that Hygiene was the theme of the year for Building Blocks in line with the current Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi’s agenda to make a “Clean India”.  This program at Building Blocks will make the little children a responsible citizen of India to make ones’ country clean for themselves and be proud about it!  Social workers of Building Blocks in the community meeting with parents will showcase videos to the parents and also teach the parents about health and hygiene to combat diseases in their neighborhood.  A pledge was signed by all 65+ staff who attended this talk and took an oath “I will wash my hands with soap and water and teach others to do the same”

Visitors and Special Celebrations

Edelweiss had many visitors in January to giveaway gifts for the children.  The school was closed for holidays in December and hence we witnessed a lot of visitors coming and sharing the holiday spirit with the kids in January also.

Make a wish foundation giving away gifts

Make a wish gift program, a program by Royal Orchids hotel to fulfil the wishes of the children for New Year was given away to the children in school.

Mrs. Prabha from U.S.A giving away clothes to children

Mrs. Prabha and her daughter Ms.Priyanka residents of U.S.A came to Edelweiss to distribute two sets of basic garments to all the children of Edelweiss including the ASP children.  They also distributed chocolates and biscuits to the children.

Yulia from Bhive workspace sponsored cakes and chocolates for Edelweiss kids

Yulia and Anil from Bhive Workspace visited our school and brought cakes and chocolates for all the children.  They also gave school supplies like markers and erasers for school use.

Parents Meeting

Community meeting in progress with parents of Edelweiss kids

Social workers conducted community meeting for parents.  In the meeting they spoke about cleanliness, attendance and punctuality.  They informed the parents about enrolling children for new admission for June 2016-17 academic year.

Special Thanks to the staff that supports Edelweiss at our Implementation Partner, Building Blocks, and also to our Project Funding Partner, Alternatives 4 Children.



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