With 90% attendance and school in operation for 24 days, February month has progressed very well academically!  Children are reviewing concepts learned in the beginning of the year and preparing them for assessments that are due in the month of March. K3 and K4 also had a second round of assessment in all the schools. Social workers are busy with house visits for new enrollment in K3 for the next academic year.

Attendance and Nutrition

No. of students enrolled: 140

Total number of meals served this month: 4,751

No. of school days: 24

No. of Students Enrolled (Day): 104

Average attendance: 95

Attendance in %: 92

No. of Students Enrolled (ASP): 36

Total breakfasts served: 2,286

Total lunches served: 1,931

Total meals served at ASP

(After School Program): 534

Total number meals served since opening at Edelweiss: 171,305

Total ABC-BB School partnership meals since opening: 283,208

Curriculum

Math

Writing practice of numbers by K5 children

Patterns was the theme of the month for K3.  Many activities related to patterns like – twin towers, what comes next?, paper pattern chains were conducted for children. Visual recognition of even and odd numbers from 1 to 10 was shown to them in a new way.

Writing practice by K4 children

K4 continued learning to count orally from 1 to 50, counting numbers in multiples of 2’s, 5’s and 10’s was repeated and identifying even, odd and missing numbers from 1 to 50 was practiced in this month

K5 continued learning to count orally from 1 to 100, counting numbers in multiples of 2’s, 5’s and 10’s was repeated and identifying even, odd and missing numbers from 1 to 100 was practiced during this month.  Also children practiced writing number names from 1 to 20.  A lot of practice problems were given for addition and subtraction concepts

English

Jolly Phonics – Teacher checking recognition of sounds

K3 this month learned sounds of the letters h and s with the help of story, action and formation.  K3 has progressed into blending sounds to read words.

K3 Child completing a test

K4 learned the short vowel sounds of the vowels. They continued writing letters from a to z. Tricky words like I, he, me, be, we, to, do, go, no and so were taught to them.  High frequency words like a, in, of, it, on, is, at, up, all and us were covered during the month.

K5 learned the sound for the diagraph ‘ou’.  They learned tricky words like why, who, saw, only, live, have, like, they, give, what, down, when & many and high frequency words like had, her, out, see, big, him, get, now, got, too, off, day and this. They also learned to read simple readers like – ‘I pick up, We are, We look and Go, go, go’.  In journal writing, they independently wrote few sentences related to the topics ant, cut, sit, rat, net, cat, dog, pig and van.

Local Language Kannada

K4 practiced writing from letters a to ta

K5 reviewed and wrote all the letters of Kannada Language Alphabet that they have learned so far.

Social Science

Children learning about Animals

K3 children focused on learning on “My Body” with activities, educational charts and games to identify body parts.

K4 children learned about the animals in the Savanna forest, desert land and tundra region of the arctic.

K5 children learned about the solar system, planets, the order of the planets and about the planet on which we live namely the ‘earth’.  They were taken on a field trip to the planetarium and were shown a movie on the solar system too.

Value Education

Clown Joseph entertaining children with music and moral stories

Theme of the month for K3 was ‘Diligent and Dependable’.  Through the story ‘Volka and the pink ball’ children were taught the moral of being diligent and dependable.

Both K4 and K5 has some moral based story telling sessions by their teachers on the stories – ‘Pig in the pond, Have you seen the Crocodile? Oliver’s fruits salad and Ten seeds’.

Physical Education

K3 children playing with blocks

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

Well balanced nutritious meals were prepared and served every day.  Children were served with breakfast and lunch on all working days.  A total of 4,751 meals were served for our children

After School Program (ASP)

2nd graders doing their homeworks

With a total of 36 students of grades 1, 2, 3 and 4 the ASP program is going well.  This program helps the students in the evening by supplementing their studies with extra help in their schoolwork and assistance in completing their homework.  This program is a supportive program which assists our previous graduates to keep up with their school work.  This month the program ran for 16 days with a total attendance of 534 children.  ABC provides evening snacks in the After School Program.

Academic Assessment

K3 children assessment in progress

II^nd assessment for K3 and K4 children was completed in all schools this month. This was the feedback from the academic supervisors for the Edelweiss School:

K3 children need to work on English and Math concepts and also on recognizing and telling what’s on the visual cards.

K4 children are weak in phonic sounds, blending, segmenting and overall concepts.  Work is not neat and need to improve on it.

Special Celebrations

Darshini celebrated her birthday with her friends

Abu Thaheer celebrated his birthday with his friends.

Birthdays are special for everyone.  Children express great joy in celebrating their birthday with their friends! This month Vaishnavi, Anuradha, Darshini, Abu Thaheer and Sanjay’s birthday was celebrated in school.  Here are a few pictures from the birthday celebrations.

New admissions

House visit by social workers for new admission

New admissions for next academic year is in progress.  Social workers along with the school admin are visiting the slums and selecting students for K3 admission for next 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.