Gecko Garden Gazette April 2014

Gecko Garden Pre-school

House #3, St. 21 Phnom Penh, Cambodia Phone:092 575 431/023 214 568 Email: geckogarden@gmail.com

General School News Dear Parents,

We had a busy month centered around Khmer New Year. The children and teachers were hap-pily involved and enjoying some focus on this spe-

cial Cambodian holiday. We were happy to see so many parents here to watch the performances at our party. The games and snacks were enjoyed by all. Thank you to all the parents who have com-pleted the Returning to Gecko forms already. We will begin to make up the new classes for next year. We will be contacting the children on our waiting lists where space is avail-able. There are many changes taking place in our population with many fami-lies leaving Cambodia this

school year.

Progress reports will be sent home on May 20th for you to read before you meet with your child’s teachers for your confer-ence.

The Gecko Garden end of year picnic will be held on 4 June at Gasolina from 5pm-7pm. All Gecko Garden par-ents, children, and their brothers and sisters are invited to attend. This year, in recognition of In-ternational Children's Day, we are having an interna-tional theme so please come dressed in your national dress or national colours, and bring a dish from your home country to share.

Upcoming

Events

May 1 International

Labor Day

School Closed

May 12—14

King’s Birthday

School closed

May 21-22

Parent Teacher Conferences

Warm Regards,

Nuala & Vattey

Members: Anne Scharrenbroich (Benjamin’s Mom)—Chair, Kunera Moore (Oliver’s Mom)—Treasurer, Vourneen Clifford (Caitlin’s Mom) - Secretary, Tash Corbin (Jasper’s Mom)-Frog Class Parent, Belinda Abraham (Armand’s Mom), Rachel Pugh (Mia’s Mom)- Garden Class Parent, Aekje Teeuwen (Luke’s Mom)-Gecko Class Parent, Nicky Jurgens (Rhys and Finlay's Mom)-Tadpole Class Parent, Lars Cronsioe (Nova’s Dad), Jo Bigham (Jack’s mom), and Sam Plummer (Sidney’s Dad) - Governance Coordinator.

2013-2014 Parent Management Group

A Word From Your PMG !

Many thanks to all the teachers and staff who dressed up so beautifully for the Khmer New Year party earlier this month and to all the parents who attended the event. It was a fun party for the children with lots of games and we really appreciated your participation!

At the last meeting, the PMG welcomed Anna back from mater-nity leave and passed the annual operating budget for the next school year. Thanks to Kunera for all of her hard work in pre-paring the budget! The PMG also worked on finalizing the 2014-2015 calendar and started planning for the annual End-of-Year Picnic, which will be held at Gasolina on Wednesday, June 4. We hope you will all be able to attend!

The PMG will be hosting a General Parent Meeting on Tuesday, May 27. The meeting will be held at the school at 7:30 pm. We invite all parents to come and find out what the PMG has accomplished this year, what the PMG hopes to achieve next year, and most im-portantly, to provide your feedback as to how you think the school year has been and what improvements or activities you would like to see next year. Whether you are just doing spring cleaning or packing out to move, the school would be happy to accept any donations of gently used books, toys, or kitchen items that are still in good condition that your child may have out grown or you may no longer need. Please drop any donations off at the school office with Nuala or Vattey. We are still looking to recruit a few more PMG members to replace those members that are leaving at the end of the school year. We would like to invite any interested parents to attend the next PMG meeting on Wednesday, May 7 to come and see what the PMG is all about. If you are interested in joining the PMG, please contact Nuala for further informa-tion.

All About April

News From the Tadpole Pond

We have had a wonderful time during Khmer New Year Break! We are also glad to be back to school. Now we are currently working on the topic, Animals Who Live in the Jungle. We have many exciting activities planned at school and we begin our theme with the elephant. This week we will be making elephants from recycled materials to be displayed on our jungle wall. We would like to say thank you to the parents who sent us the recycled materials to Tadpole class.

We would like to take this opportunity to extend a warm welcome to Fraukje. She’s getting along well and has some friends already and is easily adjusting to her new environment. It has been lovely to watch the children develop at their own rate, and in their own ways. The children have great fun during music time every Thursday. They have fun wiggling, swaying, twisting and shaking their legs, body, arms and fingers to different rhythms. They love to dance together! Well done!

News From our Frogs

It has always been a delightful moment to see our Frogs growing up quickly throughout our school year, and we can’t even believe that term 4, which is the last term, has already started! The sheer joy of seeing our Frogs growing in confidence and independence daily is indescribable. They have become more enthusiastic in joining all class activities during both indoor and outdoor play. What a wonderful event during the Khmer New Year celebration! Frog class teachers were proud and very happy to see how brave Frog kids were during the performance, and espe-cially the excitement they showed during playing traditional games. It is a blessing for our Frog teachers to teach these wonderful children. Every morning, Frogs are always ready to start their day with smiling faces and never seem to lose inter-est in singing all their favorite songs during circle time. We also would like to thank Frog class parents who have always been volunteering their time coming and reading us great stories. Term 4 is all about Fairy tales and Stories, which is a great opportunity to encour-age our kids to love reading even more…. It has been a fantastic term indeed that everyone gets involve with books, arts and crafts. We are glad that our Frogs are always cheerful, get along well with each other, and have fun learning What lovely Frogs!

News from Our Geckos

April has been a fantastic month, full of celebrations and high spirits! Khmer New Year brought about lots of cheer in Gecko class and, around the school there was plenty of singing to be heard and dancing to be seen during this enjoyable time. Well done to the members of Gecko class who performed their New Year song beautifully, (especially Finlay who was brave enough to sing into the microphone!) and for remembering their monkey themed moves for our Monkey Dance. Also a huge thanks to all parents/ nannies that attended our party to view the performance.

Throughout April we have focused upon Traditional Stories, particularly looking at Little Red Riding Hood, The Ginger Bread Man, Three Billy Goats Gruff and The Little Red Hen. During week one the children became characters from the story and took part in packing the basket for granny, making flowers, and even turning our own photographs into Little Red Riding Hood herself or the wolf dresses up as granny. These can be seen in our small Gecko classroom so please feel free to come and have a look! Week two brought about painting foamy gin-gerbread men, counting cookies, rhyming words and baking our own ginger bread cookies. These turned out absolutely delicious and all were very pleased with them judging by the smiling faces!

In week three the children modeled their own style of troll using clay and other resources. These turned out fantastic, however due to the recent, extremely warm weather they were a little soft on their way home. I found keeping them in the fridge or freezer helped to keep them in shape! We made troll balloons with a variety of colours and hair which looked very funny indeed. Gecko class also cre-ated a class bar chart displaying their favorite characters from the story. Each child wrote their own name on this as they are now becoming very competent with writing. This is also on show in our small Gecko classroom.

When looking at The Little Red Hen in the final week of the month, the children learnt to sow the seeds like the chicken in the story, had a go at making bread and created their own pizza using paper plates and a variety of shapes and colours. Each child became chef’s themselves, looking and playing

the part all week. We look forward to continuing the Traditional story theme that all seem to be enjoying thoroughly. We will be looking at Cin-derella, The Little Mermaid and We’re Going on a Bear Hunt over the up and coming month. Please check our monthly plan for details and if you wish to come and share an activity with us, feel free to sign up on the sheet downstairs.

Many thanks to the parents who have taken the time to come and share stories and activities with our class. We welcome more visitors to join us at any time throughout the day, even if you would just like to help out in the class, it’s greatly appreciated! The end of term is quickly approaching so let’s squeeze in as much fun as possible!

News from the Garden

April was welcomed with lots of funny and silly moments as the teachers of Garden had a lot of jokes up their sleeves for April fool’s day. We pretended to drink and play with frog eggs which were actually just yummy seeds; the usual routine was mixed up when we had quiet time and circle time last. There were surprise spiders in the kids’ lunches and we gave away brown colored Es instead of Brownies (brown Es).

Garden Class is very happy to welcome back Benjamin and his family especially his baby brother Philippe. Every day in the playground the children are happy looking at a big family of snails in the garden. They are happy to compare their sizes and they always like to check where they are hiding.

Also this month, each child had a chance to be what they want to be when they grow up. They all gave good

and honest answers. Some wanted to be a zoo keeper, an office worker and even a pirate!

The Khmer New Year Party was a real hit with the kids. We sang two Khmer songs and had lots of fun with the games especially the sack race. The Khmer des-serts were also very yummy.

The children in Garden class also celebrated Earth day. We baked a big Earth Cake and talked about how to save our planet. All of them know the 3 Rs; Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. You can also ask them to teach you the Earth Song.

Someone in our class turned 5 this month. Warm Birthday Hugs to our April baby, Nova!

Our Staff

I am happy to introduce Roslyn Fearn-side, who will be the Gecko Class Teacher from August 2014. Roslyn is an Australian. She is an experienced pre-school teacher who is currently working in Queensland. Roslyn was teaching in Cambodia a few years ago. She is looking forward to returning to Phnom Penh and becoming part of our Gecko Garden

SUMMER SCHOOL 2014

Summer School will run for 5 weeks, starting June 9, 2014. Our theme this year is :

TRAVEL THROUGH TIME

Each week will have a different focus:

Week 1: Prehistoric Times ( dinosaurs, mammoths, cavemen… )

Week 2: Ancient Times ( Pharaohs, mummies, hieroglyphics……. )

Week 3: Middle Ages ( knights, castles, princesses, …….. )

Week 4: 20th Century ( music, dancing of the 50’ s and 60’ s …. )

Week 5: Future ( travel, homes, did we take care of our planet?....... )