“A child who has become master of his acts through long and repeated exercises, and who has been encouraged by the pleasant and interesting activities in which he has been engaged, is a child filled with health and joy and remarkable for his calmness and discipline.” – Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child
Learning Ladder Nurseries JLT are at the end of another term already! Looking back and comparing term 1 to term 2, I feel most grateful in seeing the positive transition everyone at Learning Ladder Nursery, children and staff alike, have made. Understandably, unlike children, the staff found it more challenging to comply with the restrictions of the pandemic in term 1. For instance, little sacrifices like the removal of the kettle in the staff pantry – in line with COVID-compliance – at first seemed easily surmountable in comparison to the devastating economic hardships still ongoing around the world. Nonetheless, it deeply affected staff morale in ways that we are still coming to grips with. The slowly acquired awareness of how we were each uniquely affected with the multiple changes we had to accept, helped us re-learn the meaning of the word ‘value’. What we value most is sometimes what we never think of as valuable till we have lost it.
I am sure the disruption (blessing in disguise) offered by the pandemic made many of you arrive at similar interesting observations in your lives over the last year. Just like our children, as in the quote of Maria Montessori, we too needed time and repetition to ‘master our acts’. We are now much better at ‘doing’ the pandemic and I think we see it in a more positive light as well.
Learning Ladder Nurseries JLT hope you enjoyed your mother’s day celebrations with the children via zoom. We saw that parent participation, although from distance, made the children very happy. Sports day brought much joy and laughter to the children. I also hope you found your online meetings with your child’s teachers helpful in learning about the progress the children have made and areas where you can help them make better progress next term. We posted as many pictures and videos as we could of the sports day and animal day on Seesaw. I hope this gave you a good idea of the great time the children had. Class photos are now out. I have seen some beautifully captured faces. The photographer will be delivering photos you order and we will be happy to assist in the process.
I hope you enjoy the spring break. Those of you who have time to spend with your little ones at home, I wish for this time to be magical. Those of you who plan to save this time for later, we welcome your children at our two week long Spring camp starting Sunday March 28th to April 8th. Please reserve your child’s spot early so we can plan grouping of children as safely as possible. Just send an email to; accounts@learningladdernursery.com to book a spot. You can book a day, a week or the entire 2 weeks.
I would also like to gently remind those of you who have yet to pay next term’s tuition fee that the deadline was March 21. We are sorry we are not able to accommodate special requests for taking partial payments or waiving any part of this fee. We hope you understand we have a difficult year with operation capacity restrictions and have no room financially to match the generosity of past years. We thank you for your understanding.
I would also like to remind you that in case you plan to travel in these 2 weeks, please be reminded of advice from KHDA for parents with children in schools – declare your travel plans and provide evidence of a negative PCR test (for family members age 7 and above only) to the school before sending your children back to our school. The travel declaration form from DHA can be found here. The email you can use for the school is: contact@learningladdernursery.com
That is it from me for now. Please see under a list of some important dates from the nursery calendar. I hope you enjoy reading the sections from your children’s teachers next.
Miss Sajida
Important upcoming dates
Sunday March 28 to Thursday April 8 – Spring camp – you can still register.
Sunday April 11 – Term 3 starts
Monday April 12 – Ramadan expected – Ramadan timings will be followed as per DMCC guidelines and will be communicated closer to time
Thursday April 15th – Pyjama day, children can come dressed in PJs and bring a cuddly toy
Thursday April 22nd – Earth day
Thursday April 29th – Crazy Hair day, children come with creative hairdos if they like
Dolphins News
A very warm welcome to the Dolphins parents.
March brings an end to the second term. It has been a whirlwind fun filled adventure coupled with active learning for the children.
During March, the focus was on developing skills associated with language development, like, sound discrimination, listening, matching and rhyming. The children are thorough with their phonic skills and are able to distinguish and match initial, middle and end sounds. They use their phonic knowledge to decode regular words and also read some tricky words during reading practice. Stories and songs continue to remain an integral part of our daily routine as they foster language development. Next term, we will focus on speaking and writing skills. Children will be introduced to diagraphs and consonant blend words. Please encourage the children to read simple books at home.
In mathematics, the young learners have strengthened number skills through visualization, language and one-to- one correspondence. We have used a variety of methods to problem solve through math play. These were evident in block play, tangrams, pipe play and many more. Indoor and outdoor play time was a wonderful opportunity to implement their spatial thinking and reasoning skills. Next term, we will introduce concepts related to measurement.
Animals are some of the greatest friends and companions that we have. Besides friendship, they provide us with their unselfish love, and so the children agreed we need to be kind to animals. In continuation with February’s theme, in March we explored the sub themes of sea animals, birds, mini beasts and nocturnal animals. The children learnt about their habitats, distinctive features and life cycle using hands-on play material. The various craft projects gave them an opportunity to hone their creative skills. Cutting, pasting, colouring and other fine motor activities were part of the daily routine. In April, we will focus on the different modes of transport.
Wishing you a pleasant spring break.
Miss Vibha
Rainbowfish A News
A very warm welcome to all parents of the Rainbowfish class.
March was a very busy month! just like that, we are ending our term 2. It has flown by as all good things do. The Rainbowfish children have had another great month in the nursery. In March we enjoyed various events. Sports day was a huge success with numerous medals awarded and certificates! Children showed their outstanding performance. Rehearsals for mother’s day were done with great joy. The children showed wonderful performances to their mothers. The animal dress-up day was fun. The children enjoyed being an animal and they showed their interest in a particular animal.
Our topic focus this month has been learning about life cycles. We talked about butterfly, chicken, ladybug, and frog’s lifecycle. Children were excited to create different stages of the lifecycles using various resources. It helped them to enhance their creative skills. Watching the changes that happen during each stage gave them an in-depth understanding of the life cycle.
In literacy, we read and enjoyed stories of “The hungry caterpillar” and “The bad-tempered ladybug” where children took part in creating a story corner for their classroom. Further focus was on phonic skills and to build ability to recognise the initial sounds of a word. Children continue letter formation and recapping all the letters they have learned so far.
In math, children have shown an interest in number formation and number identification. The children have been practicing a range of activities that encourage their counting and number recognition. They have been applying their counting skills to various objects. We reviewed basic shapes and colours. Indoor and outdoor play is always enjoyable and a great time to stimulate their young minds. In April, our topic will be transportation.
Wishing you all a delightful spring break!!!
Warm regards,
Miss Rechel and Miss Shema
Rainbowfish B News
Here we are, the end of this busy month, which equally marks the end of the second term. Rainbowfish B has been extremely busy learning and growing holistically both in adult -led activities and child -initiated activities.
Understanding the World involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. We were thrilled and engaged in learning, exploring, playing, investigating wild things (Farm, water and wild animals). Children now have a good understanding of these topics, they can differentiate between farm, water and wild animals, what they eat, their habitat, what they produce and names of their babies. Learning about colours was also part of our journey this month. Experiments were conducted and children were amazed to discover that we can obtain a secondary colour by mixing two primary colours.
In Literacy, it we learned about letter sounds: recognition, formation, and beginning sounds of a word. Children can identify, sound and name initial words with the sounds /n/, /p/, and /c/. These sessions have helped children improved their vocabulary and I am proud to see the progress made.
To develop a strong grounding in number work, we had provided opportunities for children to be engage in number solving problems. Through various activities, most children can now recognize and count numbers in sequence 1-8. In addition, children have developed their spatial reasoning skills through shapes as they had fun creating 2D shapes.
Our learning adventure next term will be about different modes of transport.
Wishing you all a restful and safe spring break.
Warm Regards,
Miss Beatrice and Miss Noemi.
Starfish news
March was filled with many events and we are now at the end of Term 2. We had some wonderful events like the Sports Day, Animal Dress- up Day and Mother’s Day. All were tremendously enjoyed by Starfish. Children have been busy learning about “Animals”. We have also been learning letters and shapes by recalling their names with the aid of flash cards, recognizing them on the walls, learning how to write them through tracing exercises. Children have continued various fine motor skills activities that involve the use of small muscles which control their hand, fingers and thumb. Children are able to complete tasks such as feeding themselves, buttoning/zipping their clothes and many have learnt the tripod grip well by now.
Children learn best through play, we encourage children to take part in free play as this lets them discover and understand their world in their own way and through their interests. We balance this with more structured activities in small and larger groups, and we work with children individually to develop specific skills.
In April, our topic will be transport.
Hope you have a lovely and relaxing spring break.
Miss Annie, Miss Anne, Miss Emily and Miss Anabeth.
