WELCOME TO SONGANI CLASS

Class Teacher - Mrs Ju-Koningswoud

Teaching Assistant - Ben

In 1959 they were planting a tree in front of our school. Mr. Ben could tell us everything about it. We went to the new Secondary building to have a look and planted our own 'Songani tree' in the garden there. 

Our first topic is 'the history of Sir Harry's'. This is a whole school topic. In our Songani Class we will be focusing on 'Time travel....me and my school'. In our role play area we have a buidling site at the moment. That's the place where our construction workers are making plans and realizing the most impressive buildings.

One of the things the children wanted to know around the topic 'the ice cream shop' was how you can make a milkshake. Faith told us that her Mum could make really nice milkshakes. This week she came in our class to teach us how to make them. We enjoyed it so much!

At the end of our school year in Songani we go through the sounds again (revision) and in Maths we are focussing on adding and taking away. That's one of the reasons that we built up an ice cream shop in our role play area for these last weeks of Term 3.

At the end of our topic about the vet clinic we had some visitors coming in from Mission Rabies. Paul and Deborah explained us everything about how we can take care about dogs, how important it is to give medical care (rabies vaccins), how we can understand how a dog is feeling and how we should react on that. At the end of the day we talked about what we learned from our visitors. Quinton: "if you get closer to a dog, they can be scared." Reuben: "the ears will be flat then". Thokozani: "a wiggling tail means that the dog is happy". Praise: "the people (Paul and Deborah) are making the dogs feeling better". Amaziah: "I learned about taking care of the dogs". We were smelling and feeling dog food, finding out how dogs are feeling by having a look at different pictures and we could ask questions. Finally we went to the field to see the behaviour of a nervous and (later) happy dog in real life. As you can see, this visit was really worth it!

We really enjoy our weekly Art sessions with our whole class. Last week we made some fantastic creations with clay.

We started Term 3 with our new topic: 'I go with my pet to the vet'. Our role play area has changed into a vet clinic. From the house we go there with our pets for a check-up, to get an injection or to make a x-ray. We already had a dog with an alligator tail and a cat with malaria...

Just before the end of Term 2 we had a nice art session in Songani Class. We talked about the 'happy birds' from James Rizzi (Brooklyn) and made our own paintings based on his work.

At the end of Term 2 we had our KS1 Show: "The Bee Musical". We were so excited!! We knew all the songs, dances and our lines to say. Everyone was so impressed about our performance!

Every day is an exciting day in Songani Class....sometimes we are busy with the sounds or the tricky words, another day we are being sportive or creative.

After our visit at the post office in Zomba we know almost everything about sending a letter. This trip brought the real world inside our classroom. In our own post office are we following the same stages as in the post office. On the pictures you can find us writing letters, stamping the envelopes, finding out the weight of the mailbags and paying for sending the postcards. We also think about what we need to write on the label: is this mail going to Lilongwe, Mangochi or maybe to South-Africa? 

We went to the post office in Zomba because of our topic about: 'How can I send a letter?' We wanted to send a letter to Martha in England. The senior  manager in the post office explained us all the different stages from the journey of a letter: clearing, facing, stamping, sorting out, weighing, recording and transport. We were impressed about everything what is happening when we want to send a letter. Now we know the different stages and what you need to do if you are working at the post office. We are going to count how many days it will take for the letter to reach Martha. During that time we will build up our role play area in our classroom: our own post office!

These drawings are showing our great learning during the visit to the post office.

At the end of our topic about healthy food we talked about healthy living in Songani Class.. Exercising is important to get/keep fit and healthy. In the role play area we have a gym. We really enjoy it to do different exercises in there.

To know more about the gym and to know how to do different exercises we went to the gym 'Viva' in town. We had a nice aerobic lesson with the whole class and we had a look at the different things you can do and practise in the gym. We could try everything, we were so excited!!

During our topic about food we had a restaurant in our classroom in the role play area. Every day there was a waiter, a cook and some customers. On the menu were samoosa's, pizza's and different drinks. We were talking about what you need to do if you want to go to a restaurant (dress up, book a table, etc.) and how you should behave. After some weeks we were ready to go to a restaurant in town to have some nice food together. We went to 'Tasty Bites' and that was great!

During the Science Week about 'Changes' in Songani Class everyone was busy with changing colours. We did an experiment with colourful flowers, walking water, moving colours and pushing soap.

On DT Day Songani Class was busy with preparing healthy food. First we talked about the different types of fruit and vegetables, we were washing, cutting and smashing them and we also had to grill our potatoes on the bbq outside. At the end of the day we tasted everything.....yummy, that was delicious! We have great learners but also great cooks in Songani Class.

Just before DT Day Songani Class went to the market. We had to buy some fruit and vegetables. After a nice walk we arrived at the market and in small groups we did some shopping there. We bought tomatoes, lemons, potatoes, carrots etc. We needed to ask for the prices and we had to decide if we were getting the cheap or the more expensives tomatoes for example. We also looked around at the market and what a great things the children told us: “I don’t want to buy watermelon because it is too heavy to carry!”, “How much are lemons?” and “I want to have the big carrots please”. We also found out that they make their vegetables and fruits wet to keep it fresh and we saw that they are selling baskets on the market too. With a safe walk back we arrived at school again.

In Songani Class we are learning and playing around the topic 'healthy food'. We had a fruit picnic to find out which fruit is our favourite fruit and what the fruit names are. We were talking about: where does our food come from? and we found out why you should eat healthy food instead of unhealthy food. Our fruit and vegetable shop 'Banana town' is open now!

We build up our phonics tree by learning four new sounds every week! We know the sound, the song and the action....isn't that great? During our play based and guided learning we are busy with using the sounds in the activities. Some of us are writing their names already too.

During the day we also have other nice activities together: we are playing outside with the water, we sing a song or read a book on the carpet and every day we have our snack time and play time outside.