The K5 students of Freesia had a fantastic field trip to the Planetarium this month on February 19^th. They watched a movie about the Solar System and it was a super hit amongst the K5 kids!  All children were thrilled to watch the movie and learn about the planets in an easy and fun educative way. This trip was sponsored by LinkedIn. Volunteers of LinkedIn welcomed the children, distributed snacks and watched the movie together with them.  Also in this month, our K3 kids have fared well in the second round of school assessment conducted by the curriculum supervisors.

Attendance and Nutrition

No. of students enrolled: 104

Total number of meals served this month: 3,477

No. of school days: 24

No. of Students Enrolled (Day): 88

Average attendance: 79

Attendance in %: 90

No. of Students Enrolled (ASP):  15

Total breakfasts served: 1,884

Total lunches served: 1,593

Total number meals served since opening at Freesia: 103,074

Total ABC-BB School partnership meals since opening: 274,379

Curriculum

Math

Math counting activity

K3’s theme of the month was Patterns.  Many activities related to patterns like – twin towers, who comes next?, paper pattern chains were conducted for children.  Counting numbers along with the concept for numbers from 1 to 6 and counting orally from 1 to 20 was practiced in this month

Fun with Math activity

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

Hand prints galore – Fun with Math activity

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.  Visual recognition of even and odd numbers from 1 to 10 was shown to them in a new way.

Also children practiced writing number names from 1 to 20.  A lot of practice problems were given for addition and subtraction concepts

English

K5 practicing writing in work book

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. New words like clean, dress, fast and push have been learned and also the opposites for each of these words were practiced.

Language enrichment through fun activity

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.

English work book writing practice

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 the letters from a to laa and they learned to write the numbers from 1 to 5 in Kannada.  Also, they wrote few two letter words of Kannada Language

Social Science

K5 learning about solar system is Viva Science class

K3 children focused on learning on health and safety like: wear a raincoat in the rain and obey traffic signs.

K4 children learned about the animals in the Savanna forest, desert land and tundra region of the arctic and how they protect themselves from the weather in each of these regions.

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

Story time in progress with clown Joseph..

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 – ‘Let us thank teacher, Let us thank friends, Let us thank sister and The lion and the mouse’.

Physical Education

Children enjoying outdoor games…

Children are encouraged to play in our outdoor 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 at Freesia

Well balanced nutritious meals were prepared and served every day.  Children were served with breakfast and lunch on all working days.  A total of 3,477 meals were served for our children

After School Program (ASP)

Evening ASP class in progress

With a total of 15 students of grades 1 and 2 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 18 days with a total attendance of 270 children.

Field Visit       

Volunteers of LinkedIn on the field trip to Planetarium

In Viva Science, K5 children learned about the solar system and about the eight planets.  They were pleasantly surprised with a field visit to the planetarium that was arranged for them by the LinkedIn company.  All the K5 children from Building Blocks Schools visited on the same day and were very happy to see a movie on the solar system.

Parents Meeting

K3 parents meeting regarding completing home work at home

A parents meeting was arranged for the parents to see the work that is done in school by their children.  Also, the teachers talked to the parents about their children completing the homework given to them every day.

A special thank you to the staff that supports Freesia at our Implementation Partner – Building Blocks, and also to all Infrastructure Funding Partners, AlphaBet Club donors and volunteers, Rotary Club Amsterdam International and Wilde Ganzen.