Gecko Garden Gazette October 2013

Upcoming

Events

November 7

School Photos

November 15

Water Festival Party

November 18—22

Water Festival

School Closed

Gecko Garden Pre-school House #3, St. 21 Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Phone:092 575 431/023 214 568 Email: geckogarden@gmail.com www.geckogarden-preschool.org

General School News

Dear Parents,

Thank you to all the com-munity for such good support for our Hallow-een Party this month. Teachers and children all had fun preparing for and taking part in the making of decorations and enjoying the games and activities on the day. We would like to thank The Shop for their dona-tion of coffee and also thank Discovery Farms who gave us all those pumpkins which the chil-dren enjoyed painting and decorating to make their own jack-o-lanterns.

Unfortunately this past month has been marred by 2 days of school closures and other days on alert for more disturbances. Be-cause we are in the high security zone for all politi-cal activity, we have been more affected than other areas. We are pleased that our communication system has worked well and appre-ciate all your cooperation and understanding of the situation.

The Water Festival Party will take place from 8:30 to 10:00 on Friday, Novem-ber 15. Traditional games and snacks will be enjoyed. All are welcome to join us!

Warm Regards,

Nuala & Vattey

Members: Anne Scharrenbroich (Benjamin’s Mom)—Chair, Greg Browne (Christopher’s Dad) - Vice–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) Nicky Jurgens (Rhys and-Finlay’s Mom)-Tadpole Class Parent, Lars Cronsioe (Nova’s Dad), Jo Bigham (Jack’s mom)- Gecko Class Parent, and Sam Plummer (Sidney’s Dad) - Govern-ance Coordinator.

2013-2014 Parent Management Group

A Word From Your PMG !

It was wonderful to see so many families at our annual Halloween party, and we hope you all enjoyed the day. This year's party was a great success, generating over $500 in profit which will be reinvested back into the school. The event would-n't have been possible without the fantastic work of our PMG event coordinator, Jo Bigham, and a great group of parents who happily volunteered their time in preparing activities, decorating, baking and helping out on the day - thanks to all those involved, in particular to Rachel (Garden), Elisa (Garden/Frog), Kate (Tadpoles), Chris (Tadpoles), Zoe (Garden/Frog), Vourneen (Garden), Anne-Marie (Tadpoles), Belinda (Garden) and Tash (Frog). Efforts like these reinforce how great it is to be involved in a parent-run school!

The PMG has also been busy this month progressing other areas of business, in-cluding endorsing a new health policy for the school, and clarifying staff benefits for our wonderful group of teachers, who also did a fantastic job in helping to make our Halloween party a success.

Halloween Party!

News From the Tadpole Pond

It has been exciting to dress up for Term 1 assembly and the Halloween party. We have been doing some of activities that represent Halloween. School is such a wonderful place where children can enjoy their child hood, as well as discover their skills.

We want to give a warm welcome to Lina who just enjoyed Tadpole Class. It’s hard to believe that Lina has quickly adjusted so quickly to the routines and is showing more confidence and independence. She loves to play with all the children, well done Lina! Over the past few weeks in Term 2, it has been great to watch the children enjoy exploring about Friends and Feelings. The children love to express all the different feelings; some are sad, happy and angry. All the children have settled well into class routines and are making new friends every day. They are having lots of fun and there are many wonderful new friendships devel-oping. The children enjoy learning about each other, sharing, playing and responding to other friends’ feelings. They are always laughing and cheerful in most of the activities we do to-gether.

Also this month, we had a very special birthday for many kids! Rhys, Areyak, Imogen, Chris-topher and Max all turned 2! Happy Birthday to You All! Congratulations to Imogen, Seol Ha, Christopher and Rhys who are trying to use the potty supported by the teachers and sometimes they are tell-ing a teacher or finding the potty by themselves! Good job! A milestone for Tadpole kids!

News From our Frogs

What a fun and busy October! Frog class students and teachers enjoyed everything so much during Book Week and Halloween Festival.

We were involved happily with a role play, arts and craft and also dressing up. The story of The Hungry Caterpillar went smoothly with our performance. And the kids really got into the story as we have been practicing many times in the classroom.

It was really cute to see them showing how brave they could be in front of all the audience as they delivered the whole story to the end during Term 1 Assembly.

It has been such a great pleasure that our Frogs are building up their confidence and be-coming more independent each day. Frog class would like to welcome Nicole who just be-came a new Frog and is now very happy to explore things around in the classroom and is also learning to be friends with others.

We are glad that our kids are having a great time joining in all activities at school and those events! We hope that the upcoming Water Festival and Gecko Garden Holiday Party will bring more joy to our kids.

News from Our Geckos

The end of spooky October is upon us, and what a frightful one it has been, with Halloween celebrations being kicked off to a head start, at our school. The week leading up to our Halloween Party, the children worked especially hard to make vast amounts of decorations in order to transform our classrooms into Trick or Treat dungeons! Bouncing bats were hanging from every ceiling, peculiar pumpkin faces greeted us as we wandered through the rooms and ghastly ghosts hovered just above our heads, all thanks to the hard work and dedication of the children. Some children even had a go at making paper mache bones which draped creepily near our classroom door. It was clear the chil-dren thoroughly enjoyed the Halloween theme, therefore we will be playing with slime this week and moulding it into pumpkins on the traditional day of Halloween, 31st October. October also brought about the beginning of a new Term, and consequently a new topic has been started. Throughout Term 2, the children in Gecko class have begun to look at ‘Where we are in Place and Time’. Throughout this topic we will consider lots of different aspects around the world and look at what has changed from the past to the present. We will even be considering how things may change in the future, thinking about space. Our main theme in October, alongside our Halloween fun has been trans-port. We have looked at various vehicles, how they have changed over time and how they move. Children have made paintings using the wheels of toy vehicles, they have stacked boxes onto trucks counting them as they did so, and have made boats which we even tried to move with baking soda and vinegar! They children seem really enthusiastic towards our new topic. I hope this will con-tinue into November when we will be looking into space, space-

ships and rockets!

Gecko class would like to say a HUGE welcome back to Luke, who has just returned to the school after visiting his home due to the birth of his new baby sister. CON-GRATULATIONS to Luke for becoming a big brother, and to his Mommy and Daddy . We are all very excited to see Luke back in school and look forward to sharing lots of fun, exciting moments together.

News from the Garden

October has proven to be one of the busiest months of the school year and the children in Garden Class managed it quite well.

To start it off, we had a successful field trip to the Royal Palace and a short visit to the Silver Pagoda. Then we all enjoyed our own choice of ice cream at Toto’s before heading back to school riding in tuk tuks. Next day was Book Day and the children came to school dressed in their favorite book character. The Garden kids showed off their groovy moves while dancing the Wonky Donkey Song.

The following weeks were full of Halloween excitement! We all had fun in doing our scary and funny Halloween crafts that were displayed around school. We made sticky tape mummies, jack-o-lantern balloons, spooktacular portraits and surprise ghost in a cup to name a few. They learned a lot of spooky songs that will tickle your funny bone and the Skeleton Dance ended up being the most requested song next to 5 Little Pumpkins. During Wa-ter Play Friday, the kids had lots of fun splashing in a Monster’s Pool that had purple water with lots of creepy crawlies hiding! The class tried 3 mysterious drinks called the Vampire’s Drink, Zombie Flu and Witches Brew all with spiders trapped in Ice. And of course for our kitchen craft, we baked some delicious spider web chocolate chip cookies and saved some for the Halloween Bake Sale.

Now in Term 2, we will be focusing on what people do as a part of the community. We would like to invite family members to share with us about their work or what their role is in the community. The whole class is always delighted to have visitors who read sto-ries or teach us something new. The kids are also proud to see their parents take part in school! A huge thanks to everyone who helped us out in this very busy month of October.

Once again, Happy Birthday to Jona, Jan and Sombath! And my heartfelt thanks to everyone who made mine a very special one in school!

Our Staff

Teacher Sophea

Tadpole class Teacher Sophea has worked at Gecko Garden for almost 10 years. Ever since she went to school herself, she wanted to be a teacher, espe-cially of little children. Working with children is fun for her! Teacher Sophea is married with two young sons. In her spare time, she likes to play badminton and soccer with her older son. She also enjoys reading, listening to music and watching TV. She likes to sing karaoke when out with friends and family.

During holiday time she takes the family to visit both sets of grandpar-ents. In her husband’s village her boys love to play with their cousins around the rice fields and ride on the tractor with their uncle. In her village they love to eat all the wonderful fresh fruit and vegetables Sophea’s mother grows.

A Visit to Royal Palace !