Is my child learning? aka Kiko's English Class Saga Part 1

Kiko, my favorite 7-year-old nephew, has been speaking in English ever since he started speaking. His grammar is flawless and his accent is comparable to that of a native English speaker. We don't really know how it happened since most of the people in our family speaks in Tagalog. But we are definitely amused about this phenomena.

When he started schooling, his grasp of the English language helped him a lot through his preschool years. He started reading phonetically at age 3 and he can easily tackle big words at age 4. His reading comprehension is really ahead of his age. He loves reading about his favorite things like fishes, birds and trains and he spends most of his time making picture books about these things.

This year, Kiko entered Grade 1. My sister (his mother) and I, were quite apprehensive about how would Kiko fair in his Filipino subject. You see, here in the Philippines, Filipino is one of the subjects taught in the elementary and high school levels. And since, Kiko has been speaking in English most of his life, we were expecting that he would really have a hard time in his Filipino class.

And as expected, Kiko had really a confusing time learning his native language. It was really funny at first because Kiko would talk like a balikbayan. But luckily, Kiko got the hang of it and even though he still has the thwang, he can now properly conjugate the verbs in Tagalog.

Anyway, even with his new found love for the Filipino language, my sister and I were really expecting the worse on his report card. And boy were we surprised!!!! Kiko had a pretty good grade in Filipino and Sibika (Social Studies taught in the Filipino Language) but what shook us the most was the fact that Kiko got a grade of 78 in ENGLISH!!!!!

78??? An English grade of 78 for a little boy who spent most of his life talking in English? 78 for a boy who practically consumed several reams of bondpaper writing about his favorite things? Wow!!! Where on earth did this little boy's English teacher got his grade from?

(to be continued...)

Yummy Activities for Nutrition Month

July is the Nutrition Month and our school celebrated our love for nutritious food through two fun events

First is Our Little Cafe' which has been a much-awaited annual event in the school. It's when our little cute pupils would dress into waiters and waitresses outfit to run a mini restaurant and serve nutritious food to their parents. This year, our nursery pupils did a very great job in playing little restaurant helpers. The parents who came as guests were so impressed seeing their kids working so hard and so focused on their individual tasks.

Take a look at our nursery pupils at work here.



Our preparatory pupils had their cooking skills put to test with our second activity: The Iron Chef-MLM. It was a fun and hilarious take on the famous Iron Chef show in Food Network. The kids and their parents had a blast preparing a dish using our secret ingredient: the avocado.

Here are some pics from the event

Our New Classroom Layout

I've just recently changed our classroom layout to give our kids more room to roam around. I've put all the cabinets by the wall to have a feel of an open space. The different centers were placed in each corner of the room.

My Reading and Audio Visual Center on the far corner of the room.

My Whole Group Center is right in the middle

My manipulatives center is near the door.

My little theatre is in the other corner of my room.

I've put my sandboxes and other science activity stuffs outside the room where I could have an easier access to water.
My pupils love this new open space. I am hoping to be more productive this year.
How about you, how does your classroom look like?