We, the Brilliant Pandas, have had a busy two weeks. We have been continuing with our unit on ’A Century of Art’. We talked about art as a way of expression. Writing, singing, dancing and painting are different forms of expression to convey ideas and feelings. One of the Brilliant Pandas brought a microphone to show and tell to her friends. It gave us a great opportunity to talk about ’music’ as a different form of art and self-expression. The children learned that artists are not just painters, but also musicians and that we can all be inspired to learn to play an instrument or sing by famous musicians. Children, who were willing to sing, performed to their friends with the microphone. They also enjoyed hearing their voices through the microphone.
We have been continuing with learning the new sounds of the Jolly Phonics. For Maths, to learn the concept of measuring, ‘Is It Heavy or Light?’, the song by Jack Hartmann, was played to learn the objects which are heavy and light by practising with movements. Also, it was explained that we can compare the weights of different objects by using words like ‘heavier’ and ‘lighter’. To measure and compare, the children worked at the different tables as Tribes and they were encouraged to compare the objects by using the words ‘heavier’ and ‘lighter’.
The children in Brilliant Pandas have been celebrating birthdays with their friends for the past two weeks. The children started with the happy birthday song. Then, the birthday cakes were shared around the classroom. After this, we had some songs and dancing to celebrate our birthdays.

In the activity ’Beat and No Beat’ the Brilliant Pandas were listening to the music, making a distinction between hearing music with a beat or music with no beat, and responding creatively to what they heard. The rhythmic awareness that comes from listening to rhythm in music can carry over to an increased awareness of the rhythmic structure of language. This helps children speak, read, and listen fluently and comprehensively.

The Brilliant Pandas children made winter tree collages during one of their visual arts lessons. First, they observed various winter landscapes and learned a lot of interesting facts about winter trees. Then, they chose materials, such as foil pieces, foam paper pieces, felt sheet pieces, pompoms, and silk paper pieces, and made winter trees according to their preferences.

The Brilliant Pandas children went on a sailing trip with the chess pieces. First, they listened to the chess pieces and Mr Klye who told his favourite sailing memories to the children. Then, they dramatized the most exciting parts of the story using various kinds of materials. They learned how to choose someone to be the ‘It’ fairly and how to take turns when choosing a captain for the boat. Every child had a chance to be a captain and drive a sailing boat with a steering wheel which they enjoyed a lot. At last, the children learned and practiced setting up a chessboard and putting the chess pieces in their starting positions.

Listening, thinking, and making choices are required for the Brilliant Pandas to pay attention to the sound prompts in this game. In this process, they are using and developing their listening skills. As they think about the sounds in nature and imitate (a bear’s growl) they are using and developing their creative thinking skills. Finally, as they choose and use these sounds in the game they are exercising choice and strengthening their listening awareness.

The Brilliant Pandas children made beautiful and shiny baubles during one of their visual arts lessons. First, they observed various bauble designs and identified their similarities and differences with the art teacher. Then, they drew colourful designs, glued craft gems, and shiny Christmas-themed sequins on them in various ways, and shook glitter on them according to their preferences.

The Brilliant Pandas children had their last chess lesson in 2022. First, they looked around the winter-themed Chess Palace and talked about the changes they had noticed there since autumn. Then, they played their favourite chess games, such as chess-themed racing, recognition, reaction speed, and tag games.

We have had busy two weeks in the Brilliant Pandas. Firstly, we were preparing for our Christmas play. The children practised their lines and songs all week and gave an incredible final performance. In addition to this, we wrote Christmas cards and prepared a decoration for our families. In Jolly Phonics, the children have moved on to more complex sounds in group 5, and in Mathematics, the children have continued to learn the language of measurement, including taller and shorter, heavier and lighter.

The Brilliant Pandas had a busy two weeks. Children had been working hard on their Thanksgiving songs and they performed with great joy for the assembly. We learned about the history behind Thanksgiving and a book about what we can be thankful for was read in the classroom. They shared what they are thankful for with their friends and they wrote them on a piece of paper to make their own ‘Thankful Turkeys’. The Pandas celebrated Thanksgiving at the Gym with everyone and had a festive lunch during that day.

We have been continuing with learning the new sounds of the Jolly Phonics. Also, to practise the concept of sorting in maths, a great book, ‘Sorting, Math Counts’ written by Henry Arthur Pluckrose was read interactively and children were asked to sort the materials and group them by their colours, sizes, and kinds and lengths in the classroom. During the class discussion, Paulina had an idea that the ‘Matryoshka Doll’ can be sorted by size. The next day, she brought a Matryoshka doll from home to show how to stack the dolls and explained that it is coming from Russia. Then, each doll was given to a child to sort and order them by size and they stacked them by working as a team.

The Pandas also had Rolli Polli session to discover different movements with lots of joy. They had a ton of fun with the obstacle course giving them the opportunity to roll and play on and around the foam structure.

Our brains are hard-wired to see the patterns and sequences in the world around us. Learning to see or hear and then recall patterns and sequences means that we can extract meaning from information, language, music, and movement as well as organize the information so we can remember it more easily. As the Brilliant Pandas develop the ability to recognize and decode patterns and sequences, their learning potential is greatly enhanced because their brains are building skills in prediction and categorization, which can be applied to any new information they encounter.

The Brilliant Pandas children have started the Christmas season and prepared some Christmas tree artwork to decorate the building. They painted pine trees with brown and green tempera paint and decorated the trees with pompoms, Christmas-themed sequins, and colourful buttons according to their likes.

The Brilliant Pandas children played exciting chess-themed games with the chess pieces. First, they helped Sturdy Rook to deliver the postcards to various addresses. Then, they used their senses and found the named chess pieces by recognizing their main physical characteristics with their fingers. At last, they danced with the chess pieces in various ways and played a memory game with them.

We have had another eventful two weeks in the Brilliant Pandas class. The children learned about Diwali as the festival of light and crafted their own candles to display on our classroom window. In Mathematics, the children continued to practice their number formation and early addition skills while reading the story ‘One is a Snail’ by April Pulley Sayre and Jeff Sayre. The children learned to combine the animals in the story to find different totals. In Phonics, we have been continuing with our sounds and letter formation. The children have just finished the group 3 sounds and will be moving on to learning digraphs next week.

By participating in singing games, the Brilliant Pandas develop social skills that prepare them for adulthood including taking turns and waiting for turns, working cooperatively, observing and accepting others’ ideas, gaining skills and confidence in being a leader and follower, and watching, listening to, and speaking to one another.

The Brilliant Pandas children started to create some decorations for our upcoming assembly. They made turkey animal crafts using various skills during one of their visual art lessons. They coloured rolls and semi-circles according to their preferences, cut the semi-circles out on their outlines with scissors, glued the turkey animal’s body parts together, and glued beaks, wattles, eyes, and feathers.

The Brilliant Pandas children have played with the chess pieces in various ways. First, they played the ‘Name the Square’ game and identified the squares some objects are. Then, they played the ‘Match the Chesspieces with their Opposites’ game. Next, they crawled through the tunnel and placed the named chess pieces back in their boxes. At last, they played a chess-themed circle reaction game and checked who can run faster than everyone else.

We have had an eventful fortnight. October is “International School Library Month”, an annual celebration of school libraries worldwide. This month is vital to support children to gain a habit of visiting libraries to take the agency of their learning. Therefore, the Ervin Szabó Library today. They learned about the history of each room and had an opportunity to read many different kinds of books. The Brilliant Pandas were also celebrating “World Food Day” in order to highlight the food we choose and the way we consume it that affects our health and our planet. The children also had been learning about seeds and how to plant in the classroom.

Meanwhile, The Brilliant Pandas Class had been working hard on the project of “All About Me” for our current Unit of Inquiry called ‘Families and Friends’. The main goal of this project is to help children learn about themselves, their friends and their families by focusing on similarities and differences among them. While they had been working hard on drawing self-portraits to have an awareness of their own physical appearances, they also shared their hobbies and interests with their friends. For maths, The Brilliant Pandas were focusing on the topics of comparison and symmetry with this project. They were learning about symmetry and comparing their characteristics such as their hair, skin, and eyes, as well as their differences and similarities. At the end of the discussion, they completed the other half of their partner’s portrait by focusing on symmetry rules and similarities and differences among them.

Halloween season in the classroom just got even more fun and engaging with our spooky Halloween costumes, dance, songs, Halloween yoga and games. We got some sweets and celebrated Halloween both in the classroom and outside.
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Think of the brain as lots of different filing cabinets. The cabinet that can hear and distinguish sounds is different from the cabinet that holds the ability to make a movement. When the Brilliant Pandas ask the brain to listen, then distinguish a sound and respond with a movement they are strengthening the connections that in the future they will use to integrate new learning, make decisions, and be critical thinkers.

The Brilliant Pandas children have been very busy during visual art lessons. They learned some interesting facts about Halloween and recreated some of the Halloween symbols in various ways. They made spiders and spider webs from paper plates, egg carton pieces, pipe cleaners, and wiggly eyes. They made Jack-O-Lanters from colourful paper pieces. The children’s spooky Halloween arts and crafts proudly decorate our corridor. We are ready to have our Halloween party.

The Brilliant Pandas children went to the Chess Playground and met with the white army. The children noticed that the autumn season has arrived in the Chess Palace too. We looked at and talked about the main changes that happened in the Palace and also noticed some Halloween symbols there. We played a few games with the white army. First, we played a chess-themed memory game with the chess pieces, then sorted them according to their sizes, values, and the number of pieces we have in a set.

We have had another eventful two weeks. First, we had a visit from the dentist; we learned about the importance of brushing our teeth each day and taking care of ourselves by avoiding too much sugar. Each child received a certificate and a sticker for their efforts and patience while the dentist checked their teeth. For mathematics, the Brilliant Pandas continued to practice counting forwards and backwards to ten, and grouping pegs on a line according to the number they were given. In Jolly Phonics, we continued to learn the group 2 sounds with the songs and the actions and are beginning to blend group 1 and 2 sounds to read words. Finally, we celebrated the Harvest with our school assembly. The children performed their songs brilliantly and had fun outside with several games and activities to welcome the Harvest.

Most children, by nature, love to move! In our classes, creative movement activities are multi-layered and allow the Brilliant Pandas to explore the world with their bodies and express their feelings and ideas. As a brain-building tool, creative movement taps into a variety of learning modalities (aural, visual, tactile, kinesthetic, spatial, conceptual) and helps you develop executive function skills such as problem-solving, comparing, and trying out new ideas. Movement experiences in our classes are also saturated with language, both receptive (understanding others) and expressive (sharing one’s own thoughts and ideas).

The Brilliant Pandas children have been learning about harvest and harvestable fruit and vegetables recently. During one of their visual arts lessons, they have been preparing harvest-themed decorations for our upcoming harvest festival. First, we observed some pictures of grape trees, yards, and fruits and identified their main physical features with the children. Then, they cut green, purple, and blue paper stipes from paper, made paper circles from them, and merged them into grape-like chains. The Brilliant Pandas children made a beautiful grape yard which is definitely ready for harvest.

The Brilliant Pandas children are getting smarter and smarter when it comes to chess. First, they tested their memory skills and took the rain clouds away from the Chess Palace by naming the characters behind them. Then, they learned interesting facts about the chessboard. They identified the chessboard’s shape, learned the concept of file and rank, and counted how many files and ranks a chessboard has. At last, each child got a chessboard with a set and placed eight chess pieces on the asked ranks and files.

The Brilliant Pandas children drew cute panda artwork with oil pastels and are already decorated the corridor with their art pieces. They also celebrated International Dot Day during one of their visual art lessons. First, they read The Dot book by Peter H. Reynolds and discussed some questions related to the story. Then, the art teacher showed them how to paint with watercolour effectively. At last, the children painted various types of dots with watercolour paint.

The Brilliant Pandas children had their very first chess lesson with our chess teacher. First, they met with the famous chess characters. Then, they listened to the story of the Chess Palace. At last, they played some games with chess pieces. They raced with each other, orientated in various ways on the chessboard, and balanced the chess pieces on their heads, shoulders, feet, and backs.

The Brilliant Pandas have had an eventful fortnight. The children have been continuing learning new sounds and they have completed the first group of sounds, /s/, /a/, /t/, /i/, /p/ and /n/, in the Jolly Phonics programme.

Meanwhile, The Brilliant Pandas Class had been working hard on Maths. They have been practising numbers up to 5 with a fun game called ‘Bus Stop’.

We have been continuing with our current unit on ‘Families and Friends’. A book, All of Me written by Molly Bang, about being thankful for our bodies was read in the classroom and the children talked about their physical features and compared them with their friends. They have been also discussing the similarities and differences between themselves. Meanwhile, for the year-long Unit on ‘Rules and Routines’, we have been also focusing on the topics of ‘being a thinker’, ‘being a team’ as a class and as small groups with the TRIBEs activities and ‘collaboration’. The children in Brilliant Pandas have been celebrating a birthday with their friends. The children started with the happy birthday song. Then, a birthday cake was shared around the classroom. After this, we had some songs and danced to celebrate the birthday.

Pretend play strengthens learning by involving many areas of development at the same time: physical, social, emotional, math, music, language and literacy. Through pretend play with others Brilliant Pandas learns how to take concrete physical experiences and move toward more abstract symbolic thinking, which includes creating mental images. The Brilliant Pandas’ literacy skills are developing, too, as they begin to use symbolic thinking and language to organize simple actions into more complicated sequences and pretend situations. This lesson highlights pretend play activities that engage many parts of children’s brains at the same time, offering opportunities for your child to learn and practice both concrete and abstract skills.

We have had an excellent start to our time in the Brilliant Pandas. The children are settling in well and getting to know their new classmates and teachers. First up was the International Day of Charity, where the children learned the meaning of being charitable and illustrated different ways we can care for others. After this, we celebrated International Literacy Day where the children read a book called Little White Owl and designed their own owls for display. Finally, the children have started the Jolly Phonics programme and have been learning the initial sounds /s/ and /a/.

Finally, the Brilliant Pandas can enjoy some time playing and enjoying the sunshine. Running around the garden and playing in the sprinkler proved to be more than fun. Giggles and laughter has been a big part of our days. The dressing-up centre is always very popular among the children. Make-pretend is so much fun. Just look at the photos to see how much fun they had.

​For young children movement is body awareness. The Brilliant Pandas are learning what their bodies can do. They are defining the physical perimeters of their bodies. They are becoming less generalized and more specific in their recognition of where the different parts of their bodies are and what those different specific body parts can do individually or in union with other parts of the body. They are becoming aware of the body’s movement range from frantic activity to rest

The Brilliant Pandas children went to the Chess Playground land and played with the black and white chess pieces. First, the children named and placed all the chess pieces on the chess rug. Then, they played a chess-themed memory game with the pieces. In the beginning, they had to put four big chess pieces in the same order as the small ones collaboratively. Next, they showed their memory and creativity skills by making chess puzzles for each other and challenging them to solve them both individually and collaboratively. 

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The Brilliant Pandas were focusing on the topic of space and planets and were making some space-related artworks during one of their visual art lessons. They made space shuttles from kitchen rolls and card paper. First, they painted the rolls with white tempera paint. Then, they cut the missing parts of the shuttles from paper with scissors. At last, they made their own designs with colourful pencils, markers, and crayons and put the parts together.

In this activity, the Pandas are required to actively listen to the beats played on the drum to determine a movement response. When you ask children to move in response to a musical cue, you help them to coordinate what they hear with how they move. They also learn to control their movements by connecting their own movements to what they’re hearing. They demonstrate they understand the difference between a walking beat and a running beat by changing their movements when the beat changes.

The Brilliant Pandas children are focusing on the topic of space and planets and are making some space-related artworks during their visual art lessons. First, they designed their own planets with watercolour paint. Next, they cut them out on their outlines with scissors. At last, they glued them on black paper bases and painted small stars with white tempera paint and q-tips.

The Brilliant Pandas children went to the Chess Playground land and learned some new things about the pawn chess piece. First, the children covered their eyes and used their sensors to find pawn pieces from many. Then, they played the Pawn says game where they had to follow the Tiny Little Pawn’s commands, such as jumping up and down. Next, they learned interesting facts about the Tiny Pawn, such as he is worth only one point, there are eight of them in each army, and he can move forward only. At last, the children visited the cloudy Chess Palace and helped to find those chess pieces who were hiding behind the clouds.

The Brilliant Pandas started the week by having an abundance of fun. Exploring the Little Owl Route at the Palace of Wonders proved fun and laughter. Learning about our senses and about magnetism was very intriguing, but the best of all was the Imagination Playground. We came to a conclusion that we would like this exciting toy at Happy Kids too.

The Brilliant Pandas children continued learning a lot of interesting facts about minibeasts. At this time, they learnt about dragonflies and ladybirds, their habitats, body parts, features, and superpowers. They practiced their planning, cutting, composing, sticking, and painting skills and made cute ladybirds and fancy dragonflies. Thanks to the Brilliant Pandas children, the Happy Kids corridor is full of friendly minibeasts.

The Brilliant Pandas children went to the Chess Playground land and learned some new things about the knight chess piece. First, they played hide-and-seek with Jumpy Knight from the Chess Palace. Next, they played a chess-themed tick-tock boom game with him and learned a new chess rhyme. Then, they learned interesting facts about Jumpy Knight, such as he is worth three points, he is a twin piece, he can jump over other chess pieces, and he can move in an “L” shape. At last, the children looked for his horseshoes on the chessboard and practiced moving with him on the chessboard.

The Brilliant Pandas and their parents had the opportunity to enjoy time together during Student-led Conferences this week. The stations were plentiful and interesting. The mathematics station was based on reading the time for an hour. The Bingo game was great fun that everyone enjoyed. Matching the clocks with the word cards required special skill and a lot of knowledge as there are some rather tricky words to be read there. The Class read a Dr Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham, so no wonder the game of memory and rhyming words connected to this fun story was so popular with so many. Another classic ‘The Rainbow Fish’ was a theme for the Unit of Inquiry station. Creating rainbow fish unique and colourful proved to provide much enjoyment not only to the children.

Locomotor movements, such as walking, running, or hopping, move the body from one place to another. Developing our locomotor skills improves our balance, coordination, and steady-beat awareness. A large percentage of the human brain is dedicated to gross- and fine-motor coordination and balance. So when the Brilliant Pandas practice their locomotor skills, they exercise their brains, too.

The Brilliant Pandas children went to the Chess Playground land and learned some new things about the queen and king chess pieces. First, they played the King Says game and diligently followed King Crucifer’s commands. Next, they practiced their handshake and reaction skills. At last, they worked on their workbooks and solved a lot of chess mysteries.

The Brilliant Pandas had their first field trip this year on the first day upon returning from their Easter Break. The weather, though very much typical for April, held out for us. We even saw some sunshine. Starting a new Unit of Inquiry is the perfect reason for venturing into nature and experiencing things firsthand. The scavenger hunt was great fun. We managed to find almost everything on our list. The two things that we could not we will try and look for in the garden here at Happy Kids in the next couple of days.

Most children, by nature, love to move! In this lesson, creative movement activities are multi-layered and allow the Brilliant Pandas to explore the world with their bodies and express their feelings and ideas. As a brain-building tool, creative movement taps into a variety of learning modalities (aural, visual, tactile, kinesthetic, spatial, conceptual) and helps you develop executive function skills such as problem-solving, comparing, and trying out new ideas. In our classes, movement experiences are also saturated with language, both receptive (understanding others) and expressive (sharing one’s own thoughts and ideas).

Recently, the Brilliant Pandas children are learning a lot of interesting facts about minibeasts. They are learning about their habitats, body parts, features, and superpowers. We focused on snails and bees in our visual art lessons and recreated them and their habitats. The children made cute paper plate snails and designed their shells with oil pastels and sequins. They practiced their cutting skills and cut the snail bodies from paper using scissors. They also printed beehives with bubble wrap stamps and drew bees according to their preferences. They cut their bees from paper and glued them to their beehives.

Finally, the Brilliant Pandas could show off the costumes they have prepared for the annual Fashion Show. The children had a great time preparing and an even greater time presenting the costumes. It was a huge success with all the audience who donated over an amazing 1.6 million forints to children affected by the situation in the Ukraine. Thank you also for the generous bids.

Pretend play strengthens learning by involving many areas of development at the same time: physical, social, emotional, math, music, language and literacy. Through pretend play with others your child learns how to take concrete physical experiences and move toward more abstract symbolic thinking, which includes creating mental images. The Brilliant Pandas’ literacy skills are developing, too, as they begin to use symbolic thinking and language to organize simple actions into more complicated sequences and pretend situations. This lesson highlights pretend play activities that engage many parts of your child’s brain at the same time, offering opportunities for your child to learn and practice both concrete and abstract skills.

The Brilliant Pandas children are learning some interesting facts about Easter and creating some Easter-themed artworks during visual art lessons. They made hatching Easter eggs and practiced their drawing, cutting, sticking, composing, and decision-making skills. First, they drew colourful patterns on the egg samples. Next, they cut the egg shapes out from paper on their outlines with scissors and made baby chicks according to their preferences. At last, they cracked the eggs by cutting zigzag lines in them, then they placed the baby chicks inside the cracked eggs.

The Brilliant Pandas children flew to the Chess Playground land and continued extending their chess knowledge. First, they played the Quick Kings game and tested their reaction speed. Next, we read a story about King Crucifer and learned all his features. Then, we played Red Rover, Red Rover game, where they showed off their team’s power, strength, and cheekiness. At last, they worked on their chess workbooks and strengthened their knowledge of the king chess piece.

The Brilliant Pandas children flew to the Chess Playground land and continued extending their chess knowledge. First, they played hide-and-seek with Queen Quenessa. Then, they completed her wishes by listening to her attentively. After that, the children listened to Queen Quenessa’s story where she told her memories of hiking and having a great camp meal with the other chess pieces. She told the children her value, her moving and capturing abilities and other important facts about her. At last, she taught the children her favourite mind game, the Chess-themed Sudoku game. The Brilliant Pandas children solved a few Sudoku puzzles together and amazed Queen Quenessa with their logical thinking skills.

Through auditory discrimination activities, the Pandas are encouraged to develop phonological awareness. Phonological awareness involves an appreciation of the sounds, as well as the meanings of words. Instrument exploration activities such as this one encourage children to be sensitive to nuances of different sounds. This also helps them become sensitive to and appreciative of the subtle differences in the sounds of language as they continue to develop and fine-tune their language skills.

The Brilliant Pandas children made colourful raising hand artworks for our upcoming art exhibition. First, they drew their hands around with pencils. Next, they drew cool patterns on them with markers. At last, they highlighted their hands’ outlines with black markers and carefully cut them on their outlines using scissors.

Hurray, spring is finally here. The Brilliant Pandas enjoyed the sunshine and the gorgeous weather this week. We listened to the twitter of birds and looked for the signs of spring around the garden. The pretty yellow blossom on the Golden Bell bush is a definite sign of this long-awaited season.

The Brilliant Pandas children flew to the Chess Playground land to play with the chess characters. First, they played a chess-themed Tick-Tack-Boom game. Those children who had the chess dice at the end of the chanting chess rhyme were out of the game. After that, the children put the Chess Palace-themed puzzles pieces together. Next, they paired up and played the Postman-Rook game with each other. At last, they raced against each other to see who could respond and run faster. What a fun day full of excitement.

The Hungarian Carnival was so much fun. During the day the class had ample opportunity to enjoy activities connected to this festivity. We had the chance to try our concentration and ability to aim for a jar submerged in water, dropping coins into it. Eating the coconut balls that we made was a real treat. We even learnt to salsa after finding out about the most famous carnival in Rio. At the end of the day, we just had to conclude that the Buso in Mohacs did not do a very good job of scaring the winter away as it still feels rather chilly. We can only hope for spring to arrive soon.

Graphic notation is a term that refers to any written or visual music system that uses simple pictures or symbols other than traditional music notes and rests to represent sounds and silence. Because of its simplicity, graphic notation gives the young child easy access to understanding musical concepts through symbols as well as sounds and serves as a stepping stone to the world of traditional musical notation.

Recently, the Brilliant Pandas children are learning about families and friendships in various ways. During one of their visual art lessons, the children had the opportunity to make friendship bracelets. They used their hand-and-eye coordination and fine-motor skills to thread beads on elastic strings. They carefully chose every single bead and designed the bracelets to the best of their knowledge. At last, as real good friends do, they gave the bracelets to the chosen ones and brightened each other days with them!

Skiing classes ended for the Brilliant Pandas’ class in February. Sliding down the slopes and breaking at the end of the slopes was a vital skill they learnt. The process involved a lot of hard work and many ups and downs, not only on the ski lift… All the Brilliant Pandas showed a great deal of endurance and persistence along with a great sense of humour.

One of the basic musical concepts we teach young children is that of rhythm patterns, which are combinations of long and short sounds and silences.

Children aged 4 to 6 years are able to copy rhythm patterns with increasing accuracy. Also, their eye-hand coordination is developing and improving. Activities that motivate children to use and improve these two skills (copying of the patterns and using eye-hand coordination) are appropriate, fun, and beneficial for children.

The Brilliant Pandas children learned lots of interesting facts about the carnival season and made funny self-portrait clowns from various art materials during one of their visual art lessons. First, they selected materials they wished to use on their artwork on their own. Then, they drew with markers and glitter pens, glued various art materials with liquid glue and cut with scissors. The art room was loud with giggles as the children loved experimenting with how funny they could look like a clown. We are sure all the Brilliant Pandas children are excited to dress up as something on the big day and party.

The Brilliant Pandas children flew to the Chess Playground land and worked on their workbooks with the help of the chess pieces. They placed some chess stickers to their missing places, counted how many queens, kings, bishops, knights, rooks and pawns they have in a chess set, circled the odd ones out in chess-themed tasks, matched up pairs according to different kinds of needs and put the chess pieces in their starting positions. At last, the children played with the Chess Palace-themed puzzles and placed the puzzle pieces in their places like a pro. They surely know everything about the chessboard and the Chess Palace and are ready to learn more about the chess characters.

Recently, the Brilliant Pandas children learned a lot of interesting facts about Valentine’s Day. They made lovely love birds from some interesting materials. They practiced their cutting skills with scissors. Then, they painted with tempera paint and sponges, glued with different kinds of heart-shaped paper pieces and glue. Thanks to the Brilliant Pandas children you can feel love in the air all around the Happy Kids building. Well done Brilliant Pandas.

The Brilliant Pandas children flew to the Chessplayground land and went on a train trip with the white chess pieces. They learned that using maps and GPS can help them to keep themselves on the right path when traveling. Just like on the roads and the chessboard when moving, we have to keep the rules. They learned that they can move sideways, up and down, and diagonally on the chessboard with most of the chess pieces. Then, they played games where they formed themselves in lines, files and diagonals. They also played a pawn-themed line game where they raced against each other to see who works better as a team. At last, they became live-GPS coordinators and showed the final positions of some chess-themed addresses. Well done Brilliant Pandas children, what a fun day it was.

Singing is a basic and beautiful form of human expression. A child’s ability to be expressive in language extends to exploration of her many voices, singing songs in a limited range, and emerging pitch accuracy. In keeping with the integrated nature of learning, the benefits of singing extend beyond the ability to match pitches. Singing helps with memory and recall, with physical development, creativity and socialization.

The Brilliant Panda’s rocked the place today during the Valentine’s Day Assembly. They moved along the songs, used their angelic singing voices and filled the gym with love and appreciation. No wonder the whole kindergarten greeted and appreciated this marvelous performance with loud cheers and clapping. We hope the photos can transcript a part of this wonderful atmosphere.

The Brilliant Pandas learned lots of interesting facts about the Chinese New Year and made some decorations for our upcoming New Year celebration. They made Chinese paper dragons by cutting colourful paper strips using scissors, then forming them into circles and making paper chains using glue sticks. Next, they added long tails, wiggly eyes, horns and nostrils to their dragons too. They couldn’t wait to finish the last touches and play with them on the big day! Well done Brilliant Pandas!

The Brilliant Pandas raced against each other by showing off their chess skills, such as who can put the chess pieces in their starting positions correctly the fastest, who can pass the chess dice around the most before the chosen couple complete their task in the middle, who can tell more things about a chess piece and who can find a chess piece in the Chess Palace the fastest. The racing vibe was the highest in the room filled with lots of excitement. Everyone nailed the big chess race and deservedly left the room with a chess sticker of their choice. Well done Brilliant Pandas.

Experiencing the sound of the slide whistle going from low to high and high to low allows the children to focus on the melodic direction and sound of the glissando. Using their voices and the movement of their bodies to imitate the sound and shape of a glissando is a multisensory learning experience, one that lights up more of the brain and provides a more lasting learning experience.

Today the Brilliant Pandas had some fun in the morning. We celebrated National Puzzle Day. We created some puzzles and made our own cutting the pieces of the puzzle ourselves. In preparation for Valentine’s Day, we thought it would be fun as well as useful to create a display. We used the pieces of old puzzles. Stuck them to a heart that we attached to some lolly sticks. We like them very much. The online puzzle game was great fun too.

The Brilliant Pandas started exploring a new, exciting topic in their Unit of Inquiry. They are learning about Families. To warm up to the topic they watched and discussed a PowerPoint presentation focusing on the vocabulary for this topic. Once they all showed to understand this, they started presenting their own family trees to their classmates. It was wonderful seeing how confident they just are in talking and even more wonderful to see how respectful the others were listening. A hip-hip-hurray for all of them.

Theme: Rhythms of the Land

In the activity ’Beat and No Beat’ children were listening to the music, making a distinction between hearing music with a beat or music with no beat, and responding creatively to what they heard. The rhythmic awareness that comes from listening to rhythm in music can carry over to an increased awareness of the rhythmic structure of language. This helps children speak, read, and listen fluently and comprehensively.