February 2015 Newsletter - Lighthouse Special Education

Three Little Ships International Preschool
February 2015
Newsletter
School Holidays
Thursday 5th of February: study day for teachers No school for children
Friday 20th of February: half school day. School ends at 12:30
Monday 23rd – Friday 27th of February: Krokus holiday (Spring holiday)
REMINDER: School photographer
On Thursday 12th February the school photographer will visit the Lighthouse and Three Little
Ships. Both individual and class photographs will be taken.
It is advisable to dress your child/children in bright colours. Yellow, green and red will look the
best. Black, dark blue or brown will not look as good on the picture. If it is rainy that day it is
important your child comes to school with dry hair.
The price of the whole packet is 10.50 euro’s.
Fire drill
On Tuesday January 20th we had our first fire drill of this school year.
The children were very well prepared and knew perfectly what to do the moment the alarm
sign went on. Every group left the building as quickly and orderly as possible, but in a very
calm and structured way. Everybody arrived in time (2 minutes) at the assembly spot:
playground of KSS.
During the spring holiday a company will provide and install a professional fire alarm system.
We will do a second fire drill later this school year to try out this new installation.
Chapeau for all the kids and staff to act so accurate and calm during the exercise!!!
New volunteers / lunch supervisors
My name is Leonardo Yanez Moreno, I was born in
Venezuela but moved to the Netherlands when I was
8 years old. I am 23 years old now, and in 2010 I
became Dutch through naturalization. My previous
study was BA (Hons) Childhood and Youth Studies.
In my family psychology studies have always been a
subject of conversation. Both of my parents are
psychologists specialists on developmental
psychology, and now my wife and I are also
psychologists. I have always had a particular interest
in working with children and have volunteered as a
coach of baseball, tutor of Spanish (as this is my mother tongue), and I have given lessons in
guitar and bass. Furthermore, I enjoy learning about new cultures and learning new
languages. Currently, I speak English, Spanish, Dutch and have a basic level of French,
Japanese and Portuguese.
I am currently not only a volunteer at the Lighthouse Special Education School, but also am a
baseball coach at a club called Catch (www.hsv-catch.nl). I was myself a student at the KSS
when I first arrived in the Netherlands in the year 2000.
My name is Barbara Bacciucchi, I have been
volunteering here since September 2014.
I have already worked several years in Finland as a
secondary school teacher and occasionally as a
kindergarten teacher. I mainly volunteer in class R
and I have developed a strong bond with the
children.
This is my second year in The Hague and I have
grown to love this city with its beaches and beautiful
Art Nouveau architecture.
My name is Lara Corral, I am 23 years old and I
am from Barcelona, Spain. I am currently living in
Den Haag. I am also studying to become a Spanish
teacher (Cursus voor docenten Spaans als
vreemde taal) at Instituto Cervantes in Utrecht. I
have worked with children since I was 15 and I have
given Spanish, Catalan and English private lessons
to older children. I finished my university studies in
2013 (Bachelor in translation and interpreting of
Spanish, Catalan, English and French) and last
year I worked as au pair in Brussels, Belgium. I love
children and I really enjoy working at Lighthouse!
My name is Madina Gazieva, and I am currently
studying in my third year of the International Studies
program of Leiden University. My volunteering
experience at the Lighthouse Special Education has
been so far very fulfilling. I am extremely happy to
work in a such an active, positive and supportive
environment where teachers are understanding,
willing to guide and show ways of meeting everyday
challenges.
My Name is Anca Boros, I come from Romania
and have lived in The Netherlands for the last 4
years. I am a Mathematics teacher for secondary
school, I love being surrounded by children, that is
why I chose to help supervising during lunch time at
this school. In my free time I enjoy reading books,
running, spending time in nature and doing
handcrafts.
We also had to say goodbye to Ms Neha, who worked with us as a volunteer, lunch
supervisor and substitute class assistant. She moves to Singapore first and later on to India.
She was a lovely colleague and a very good help in class. Thank you Ms Neha! We will miss
you and want to send you our best wishes!
EARLY YEARS FORUM
The Three Little Ships is part of a working group called the Early Years Forum. It is a
collaboration of all the English speaking early years providers in The Hague (BSN, European
school, American School, ISH, the Windmill, True Colours day care and many others) The
Early Years Forum meets once a term and discusses interesting topics and share knowledge.
On Wednesday the 28th of January it was Three Little Ships’ turn to organize the event. It
started with a tour of the school, where the participants got to meet some of the children and
see the classrooms. Then there was a lunch followed by a presentation on PBS by Miss Lena.
Afterwards an interesting discussion ensued and there was sharing of useful tips.
It was an educational afternoon and the Three Little Ships is excited to be part of such a
working group, and very happy to be able to share some of our expertise with the other
schools.
Many thanks to Ms Lena for organizing this event so well!
News from class 1
January has been a very nice month! We finally had the chance to play with some snow and
see our playground turn white! Making our own snowflakes and winter globes, was also much
fun, especially posing next to our handmade snowmen!
The children were very excited talking about their houses, bedrooms and learning more about
this topic. They enjoyed planting the seeds, making their own little garden and seeing it grow!
February will be a short month and our topic will be one of the children's favorite!! We will be
talking about animals in different countries, their houses and what they eat!
Since we are learning how to become little vets, the children are already familiar of how to
take care of pets and other animals! They are being so responsible and caring!
News from class 2
January was a fun month in class 2. The children were happy to be back and they were
working hard learning about the season winter. Unfortunately we didn’t get snow  But we did
have the chance to play with some ice that we made ourselves. We also made some beautiful
art with frozen paint.
The topic homes was another exciting learning process. We made some forts using blankets
over the tables. The children enjoyed hiding and pretending it was their house.
At the moment our school is partaking in a project with fruit provided by the government. We
have enjoyed a lot of fresh produce and the children are very adventurous trying new fruits.
We made fresh fruit skewers as an activity to learn about fruit.
Building Forts
Playing with Ice
Parachute fun
Making fruit skewers
News from class A
Class A have been enjoying the delicious fruit and vegetables
from the Fruit Project. It is a great way to get the children to
think about eating healthy things and also to try fruits and
vegetables that they may not have had before. So far, I think
that the favourite fruit has been pears – nearly all of the group
found the juicy, sweet pears delicious. As well as eating the fruit,
we have done a lot of fun activities using the fruit – the children
enjoyed making fruit and vegetable kebabs, squeezing oranges
to make delicious orange juice and making flowers from
cucumber and carrots. They learned how to cut safely and how
to use a juice machine. They also made beautiful pastel
drawings of kiwis and printed with carrots. Eating fruit and
vegetables is good for us – now we are going to think about
other things that keep us healthy too.
News from class R
Class R are slowly gaining weight with the IPC unit ‘Chocolate’ – just kidding  We
experimented with melting chocolate to see which chocolate melted fastest: white, milk or
dark. Great fun was melting chocolates in our hands… Another Science experiment was
about the material chocolate is best wrapped in. To do this, we wrapped pieces of chocolate
in various materials (paper, plastic, aluminium foil etc) and put these in a bag with crushed
garlic. Next day we tasted the chocolate and ranked the taste of garlic. We repeated this
experiment so that is was fair. The outcome: wrap it in plastic!
We also have some volunteers in our class: on Mondays Mr Leo (Leonardo) helps us out and
Miss Lara helps a hand during our life skills program on Fridays. Both are very welcome!
Mr Philipp has been working on weighing using various scales and is now moving on to
measuring liquids (capacity). We found that information on weight, capacity and length is all
around us: can you find this information at home?
LINKX project
Recently you received an e-mail with information about a new project/research we want to
start in cooperation with Ms. Helma van Rijn, who developed a new tool for I-pads and
smartphones, called: LINKX. We asked parents to fill in the form in case they want their child
to participate in the project. We have 13 children now who will be part of the project. We will
keep you informed!
For more detailed information: www.linkx-app.com
MANY THANKS
Many thanks for your cooperation regarding the Sinterklaas Shoe Collection last December.
The organization ReShare collected 8000 kg shoes (400 boxes in total). They gave some of
the shoes to children belonging to families in need or children’s homes and the rest was used
for recycling. From the collected money they could make 1750 children very happy with a
toy’s gift check.
Happy Birthday
February 13: Ms. Ching
March 9: Ms. Donna