ISB PRIMARY NEWSLETTER PRIMARY Pantelimon Campus: Sos. Gara Catelu, Nr. 1R Sect. 3, Bucharest, Tel. 021.306.95.30 Pipera Campus: Sos. Pipera-Tunari, Nr. 82 Voluntari, Jud. Ilfov, Tel. 021.267.42.18
Find us online here:
www.isb.ro
IN THIS NEWSLETTER EDITION: Snow White & the 7 Jockeys
Yummy, I love Chinese food! Alice in Wonderland
Decorating Easter Eggs Puss in Boots
Maths & ICT Week
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pring is arriving slowly in Bucharest! The PTA organised an informal dinner on Monday, 31st March, 2014 in Hilton Hotel. The turnout was amazing and all parents and teachers had a relaxing
time in a nice setting, good food and company. It was a great opportunity to meet old friends, speak with the teachers of your child/children, change opinions and enjoy a lovely evening. It was a successful event and we will try to plan more of these type of events in the future. Georgeta Clarke PTA Chair
PTA Dinner
Yummy, I love Chinese food!
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he children had another great term playing and learning new things together. They were really
excited to celebrate Chinese New Year. We learnt about Chinese traditions and pretended to be a huge dragon. We created our very own Chinese restaurant’ and tried to use chopsticks – it’s harder than it looks! Our next topic was ‘Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes’, everyone’s favourite story was ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and of course everyone wanted to try the costumes and pretend to be mama bear, daddy bear or baby bear. We had fun chasing Miss Christa out of the bear’s house – she was goldilocks! We also made and tasted some porridge. We also had a very important event to celebrate –
Mother’s Day. We worked very hard to try and surprise our mummy with a card and a film to show them how much we love and appreciate them. Everyone loved working with their mum’s to make a basket of paper flowers.
Dentist Trip exciting goodie bag. We are really happy with the progress children have made in their learning, especially with their reading and phonics. Many children now know most or all of the basic letter sounds.
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n March we have studied signs of spring. On our walks we have observed flowers blossoming, many
insects on the ground, and changes in weather. We have also enjoyed a trip to the dentist. Children got their teeth checked, had a chance to learn about dentistry and healthy eating and left with a useful and
Nursery went on a yoga journey
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ursery went on a journey to the desert! The children began by doing a dance for the sun or a sun salutation to say hello to the sun. We then used a variety of yoga poses to help us imagine our journey.
We went on different form of transport including planes, bicycles, cars and a camel. We also met a snake on our journey and made an oasis of trees, working together to keep our balance. Before washing and drying our cloths and then meeting a queen in a tent to have a cup of tea. We’re then very tired and relaxed by listening to calming music and imagining the star in the desert.
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Busy Bees
pring in Romania is always celebrated by giving a little gift, a “ Martisor”, to the beloved ones. This is how we know that 1st of March - the first day of spring - is here. The children made “Martisoare” and they attached red and white string, meaning love and sincerity. On 8th of March, Nursery children tried
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their best to show and to share all their love and good thoughts to their mothers. They put everything down on a card, sang two songs and they shared special moments with their mothers. As a gift, they painted flower pots and they made a bouquet of flowers for their dear mothers.
Dinosaur Fever
eception Discoverers and Explorers had a fantastic time learning about dinosaurs this term. We learned the names of the types of dinosaurs and their diet and habitats. We bought our own dinosaurs from home and measured them using cubes, later
arranging them in order of height. We also made some fantastic observational drawings using pastels. We used our speaking and listening skills to describe our dinosaurs and wrote a sentence using the sounds and tricky words we have learned. We really enjoyed reading “Harry and his Bucket of Dinosaurs” and estimating how many dinosaurs we could fit into a bucket and other containers. In the classroom we explored our sensory and small world area using sand, volcanoes, rocks, bones and different sized dinosaurs. The highlight of the term were our two trips to the dinosaur exhibition in Baneasa Mall and a trip to Antipa Museum to look at life size models of dinosaurs. Rooaaaaarrr!
Ladybirds “Things that Go” This half-term in the Ladybirds class we have been learning all about ‘things that go.’ There is a special word we use for this and that is Transport. We have learnt about vehicles that travel by air, sea and road. We have made many different types of vehicles and talked about our favourites. Teo and Muhamed love motorbikes but everyone else loves airplanes because they take us to visit people we love. We went on a trip driving around the local area to observe different kinds of transport. Abi was hoping we would have a big bus so we would be up high to see everything. Miss Sarah thought it would be a little bus but no, we were lucky to
get a big bus!!! So, off we went around Pipera where we saw cars and trucks and motorbikes and many taxis. Then, we went past Baneasa airport where we saw some big and small airplanes. Finally we drove down to Aurel Vlaica where we saw 1, 2, 3 trams. What a great trip!
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Spring is finally here!
e have been waiting eagerly for Spring to arrive and now it’s finally here! In our school, on our playground, in our hearts, we took advantage of it and started celebrating each and every moment! The first day to celebrate was Martisor – a special day when people make small gifts and offer them to their best friends or to the person whom they love most. These tiny special gifts are meant to symbolize appreciation, love and true friendship. This is exactly what we did! We made Martisoare, we decorated them, we wrote our best thoughts and we gave them to our good friends. Our favourite day was dedicated to our dearest persons – our Mothers. We worked very hard to surprise our mummies on the 8th of March so when they were invited in school we made sure they would surely feel all the happiness that surrounded them. We made special Mother’s Day Cards and we built our own boxes that we filled with love.
We put on a small show, sang Mother’s Day songs and told them why we love them so much. We are now looking forward to new special days to celebrate!
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Decorating Easter Eggs
ecorating Easter Eggs is one of the funniest things about Easter. Our students are old enough to really participate in decorating Easter eggs. They are a group of seven students: Zadeh RoseMary, Sandu Ilinca, Sandu Sofia, Volintiru Maria, Curtli Azra, Moraru Mihai, Calin Mara, who join in the Romanian classroom every Thursday after classes where they decorate Easter Eggs for an hour, carefully supervised by their Romanian Teacher, Elena Bouhar. It is an inedited activity for the students as the Decorating Easter Eggs Club is an activity that takes place for the first time in our school. The students are very enthusiastic, involved and talented at the same time. During Easter you can admire the result of our work - a small collection of Decorated Eggs in the school
display-window. We are grateful to Mr. Faruk Erduran for the support and encouragement!
We are celebrating Martisor and Mother’s Day!
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or these two special events our students prepared a show in order to cherish the coming of spring by a few poems and facts. Moms were rewarded with a small gift made from the bottom of their children’s heart. We hope they enjoyed it! Happy Mother’s day! Also, the girls from Dancing Club for Special Events joined the Assembly with an acapella song, called “Lazar” - a song that celebrates the nature coming back to life, and with a Romanian traditional dance - Brasoveanca. They really enjoyed singing and dancing on the stage.
“Math and ICT Week” in the Primary ICT Laboratory
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uring the 24th week of school, starting with March 10th, the children from the Primary School had a busy week, with many competitions. In the ICT lessons the children tested their ICT and Math abilities: the children from year 1 to year 5 had some interesting tournaments, with the Year Group Finals on Friday. In Key Stage 1 the children had the Jet Ski Addition and Island Chase Subtraction tournaments and the first places were occupied by Iulia from 1C and Ioana from 2B. In Key Stage 2 the children played Multiplications Grand Prix, Drag Race Division in year 3 and year 4, and the first children to finish the races were Lina from 3M and Amir from 4C. In year 5 the children compared their keyboarding skills in the Sky Chase Tournament, and the fastest one was Tudor from 5D, followed by Efe from 5K and Gabriel from 5D. In year 6 the children improved their collaboration skills by playing ICT Treasure Hunt by groups. All of them had to find some evidence that led them to the ICT laboratory to complete a computer task. During the Computer Club, the pupils created Craft Computers and discovered the hardware components inside the Base Unit. Elizabeth from 3P was so kind to share with her colleagues the functions of each component, and she received a special award for this.
After finishing cutting and sticking everything, the children attending the club created a network with the craft computers. Special “Thank you” Certificates were received by some year 6 children for being super ICT helpers this week: Alessia, Asal, Sophia, Hristos and Balthazar. To summarise, this event was full of excitement, joy, team spirit and winners. Congratulations to all the participants!
Maths and ICT Week
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he week of the 10th of March gave all Primary students an opportunity to take part in ISB’s annual Maths and ICT Week. It proved to be a very busy week, full of activities and competitions. Many students from all year groups spent their breaktimes in Mr Warlow’s classroom, attempting to solve devilishly difficult number and shape problems, and earning points for the House Competition at the same time. Every break saw the classroom bursting with determination and enjoyment. At the same time, a huge number of students produced some really top quality posters showing us how maths is used constantly in our daily lives. Judging the competition was extremely difficult, as so many were worthy of winning prizes. The best of the posters were also displayed in the gallery area. While competitions were also ongoing during ICT lessons, the big maths quiz happened during Thursday lunchtime. It was a closely fought battle with teams from the four houses in Key Stage 2. Eventually, after great teamwork, we ended in a dead heat between Lions and Elephants. It took a tie-break question to give Elephants the final win. This also meant that the overall winners for the whole week, after all competitions were taken into account, were the Elephants. Well done to them!
Learning about Dinosaurs
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ear 1 are learning about Dinosaurs. We can name some of the dinosaurs and identify the features of carnivores and herbivores. We have looked at pictures of fossils of dinosaur bones and footprints. We know that fossils can tell us a lot about the dinosaurs, such as how big they were, what they ate and how old they were. We made our own dinosaur fossils using by pressing model dinosaurs into dough to make an imprint.
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ear 1 had a very enjoyable trip to the Geology Museum, where we learned even more about dinosaurs and how they became extinct. Some dinosaurs were ferocious meat eaters and some were gentle giants that ate only plants. This has been a very enjoyable topic and we still have so much more to learn and do.
The geology Museum
The Peasant Museum
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ear 1 were lucky to get the chance to visit this wonderful place and get a glimpse into Romania’s rich past. Such an array of interesting artefacts to look at, from tiny ornaments that would decorate a country house to enormous mills that were used to grind wheat to make bread for the villagers. We even had a look inside an old peasant classroom, where they had ink-wells and chalk board so different to what we use now.
Alice in Wonderland
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ust a few weeks ago, Year 2 performed their annual production with two handfuls of Alices. The ten girls who stepped into the title role did a wonderful job leading us on a journey through Wonderland, meeting a crazy array of characters where the other boys and girls of Year 2 showed themselves as the equals in their super performances. The children had a lot of lines to learn and put in a sterling effort in the weeks before to ensure they all knew their lines. A special mention must go to our Cheshire Cat who only stepped in to learn his lines and fill the role a
week before the show. When parents came to see the final performance they were treated to a pristine presentation, featuring their children in resplendent costumes, which was packed with singing flowers, talking animals and the wicked, yet hilarious, Queen of Hearts. The students and teaching staff of Year 2 enjoyed taking you all on a trip to Wonderland and hope you enjoyed it too!
Year 2 Science and Topic
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ear 2 have been learning about plants in Science. The children found the main parts of a plant, studied the lifecycle of a sunflower and identified what a plant needs to survive. We are examining “Our World” during Topic lessons this half-term. As part of the crosscurricular learning, each child made their own plant pot. They used papier-mâché and paint to decorate a plastic bottle. After that, they planted flower seeds in the pot. Every day, the children water their individual plant pot and become very excited about how much
their plant has grown. The Year 2 classes have enjoyed the entire process, and the teachers have felt that it has been a great learning experience for the children.
Year 2 Natural Art Work
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ear2 children have also created some lovely natural collages in their Topic lessons. They explored the school’s surroundings and collected sticks, moss, tree bark, seeds, leaves, small stones and flowers. They then designed, using other artists’ work and their pure imagination, to put them together in unique, interesting displays.
Snow White and the 7 Jockeys
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ecently we have been very busy practising for our play ‘Snow White and the 7 Jockeys’. In English we have been completeing a unit on Play Scripts, so we learnt how to speak loudly and clearly on stage and improved our acting skills during our rehearsals. We enjoyed learning our words and the songs for the show. We had a lot of fun making the props, coming up with
ideas for the dances and making the different characters action. Friday 28 March was the big day and everybody enjoyed the show, with lots of comments of “Marvellous” and “Excellent.” The best praise though, was seeing how happy the children were with themselves. Superb job everybody.
Delicious Eating
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n Science, we learnt about Healthy Eating and Teeth. We looked at the food groups, healthy diets and food for different animals. We learnt about different types of teeth and the jobs they do. We followed this up by looking at animals specialised teeth and how we can guess their diet by their teeth. We also learnt how to brush our teeth correctly, so we brought our toothbrushes and toothpastes to school to practise. The last week before our half term break all Year 3 classes went on the trip to the dentist to Dent Estet. The
dentist reminded us how we should be looking after our teeth and then she checked our teeth. In Topic, we learnt a lot about Chocolate. We looked at the history of how cocoa beans were introduced into Europe. We read about Fernando Cortez and Christopher Columbus. We made brochures with information about Columbus. We used egg boxes to make replicas of the boats that the Spanish used to explore and trade in the Americas. We also made pots to store the cocoa beans in out of clay!
Vikings
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s part of our Invaders and Settlers topic; Year 4 have been studying the Vikings. We have learnt about the reasons why they left their homelands, their daily lives and made links to the local history. 4M have made a really fun model of a Viking Longboat and proved to be very skilled at crafting shields and swords. We have had a great time ornating them with our own designs. 4C
used atlases to create and annotate maps showing Viking homelands and where the Viking explored and invaded. We also investigated the ships the Viking used and really enjoyed becoming Viking traders and haggling over valuable goods. We can’t wait to find out more about our next group of Invaders and Settlers, the Romans!
Imaginary Worlds In English we have been looking at imaginary worlds. The children have the opportunity to draw their own imagined world and write about it. These are of examples of the wonderful writing 4F produced. My world is full of strange things. People have blood in their body instead of blood and they drink blood instead of water. People are walking with their head, their legs are used to clap or see, they have eyes instead of nails. President Warm is the boss of Jollywood and his house is made out of $100 dollars. When it is raining flying ice creams are flying from the sky. Their landmark is the Chewing Gum Towel (instead of the Eiffel Tower). In Jollywood hamburgers are clouds and birds can’t fly, only cats or other domestic animals can fly, but domestic animals eat birds and birds eat domestic animal food, thats rediculous right? Flats are spinning and if you live there it is really, really hard to sleep. In my world cars are going 1000kmp and they are flying. The sun is a one pence coin and it is really shiny and you can see it really easily. The grass is made of ketchup. So this is my world and I hope you liked it! By Filip Samson It is a bug world. Bugs do not like humans. They have cinemas. They have shops. They have houses. They have schools. There are beetles, flies and butterflies and all the bugs. They come to the toilet and if they
flush the toilet they come to my imaginary world. Often the men jump really hard so it rains soil. The imaginary world is black and grey all the time. There is a way out but it is really hard. By Tarik Gul Although it is dark it is mysterious. You would often think it’s only an alien world. But to me it is more, it is a magical, mysterious, interesting world. It has many buildings that are sky scrapers. It is like deja vu, it is a world full of people who are stressed in other worlds, it is wonderful. Despite this it is controlled by the evil forces. In two other worlds it is fabulous. After the evil forces take over theother world I think we will all die. It is natureless. It is hard to live in those mansions because they are as fas as can be. By Venice Pinta.
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ear 4 have been very busy recently with a range of activities, the highlight of which was our recent production of Puss in Boots. Our final show to parents was the culmination of many hard weeks of practice in the classrooms, in the theatre and at home. The children worked tremendously hard to learn their lines and showed great patience whilst waiting to perform their role on stage. They also showed enthusiasm throughout the rehearsals and displayed their full repertoire of acting skills; using clear and varied
voices, appropriate body language and numerous facial expressions. Led by Ms Fox the children developed their singing voices to sing a number of challenging songs well which really added to the performance. Ms Liane and Ms Adela worked tirelessly to create beautiful props for the show and with their fabulous costumes organised by parents the children looked great, well done to everyone involved in making this year’s show such a success!
Puss in Boots
Beware of the ogres!
Stylish narrators
We are busy: Learning!
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n year 5 we are busy learning and enjoying our new theme ‘Shipwrecked’. As part of our theme, we have read the famous children’s novel ‘Treasure Island’. We explored the characters in detail and thought about how we would cope if we were stranded on a desert island. The children loved acting as pirates and making their own treasure maps. In our topic work we have been learning with great interest about Titanic and what it was like on board this famous ship. The children stepped back in time as passengers on board the ship and role-played being a survivor and a victim of this famous voyage. Our students have really enjoyed being challenged this term in their maths development. They particularly love to compete in daily mental maths games as well as getting involved in the many maths events and competitions, which took place during Maths week. To develop scientific minds and to help our students foster a love for learning we visited the ‘Knowledge City’ museum. Our students participated in lots of scientific based interactive games which helped each child to think in a scientific manner. Nobody wanted to leave when it was time to go! We are also very proud of our Year 5 students who participated honourably in the Lumina ‘Little Scientist’ competition this term. In Year 5 we aim to teach the ‘whole’ child. It is important to us that
children learn how to deal with social and emotional issues as well as the academic ones. We are very proud of the progress our students have made in all of these areas. We have promoted positive behaviour on our year group corridor by creating friendship walls and friendship letter boxes for sharing kind messages with each other. We have also learnt about E-safety and the dangers of cyberbullying. Our work in this area is also displayed on our corridor for others to see and learn from. Next term we have our year group residential trip to Constanta. We are confident this will be a wonderful experience for our students and we look forward to sharing the details of this trip in the near future.
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n science year 6 children have been busy doing experiments for reversible and irreversible change. Children used sieves, funnels, filter paper, magnets and and the process of evaporation to separate a variety of solids and solutions.
Children using filters to separate a muddy water solution
Celebrating Laura’s birthday!
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ome Year 6 students celebrated Laura’s birthday with a beautiful cake and fun and games during Golden Time. An excellent way to finish off a hard week’s work.
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF BUCHAREST
Upcoming Events: 07 April
Primary Assessment Week
10 April
Year 6 Parents’ Evening
14 April
Art Week
14 April
Year 6 Residential Trip
17 April
Primary Parents’ Evening (Years 1-5)
18 April
Last Day of Term 2
Pantelimon Campus: Sos. Gara Catelu, Nr. 1R Sect. 3, Bucharest, Tel. 021.306.95.30 Pipera Campus: Sos. Pipera-Tunari, Nr. 82 Voluntari, Jud. Ilfov, Tel. 021.267.42.18
Find us online here:
www.isb.ro