February 14, 2017
by Denise Krebs
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Blog Archives
December 22, 2016
by Denise Krebs
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Flat Caitlin Visits from California
Flat Caitlin is a paper doll visiting Bahrain for a few weeks. She belongs to Mrs. Denise’s third grade niece who lives in California. Recently Flat Caitlin took a trip to the souq. Here are some of her adventures. Check out the hashtag: #findflatcatiet for more pictures.
Let Mrs. Denise know if you’d like to take the paper Caitlin home to have some adventures at your house.
April 29, 2015
by Denise Krebs
2 Comments
Now Here Are Some Questions for Our Pen Pals
Dear Iowa Pen Pals,
We finished answering all your great questions. Now we have some questions for you.
- We go to school Sunday through Thursday. What days do you go to school?
- Do you have Sports Day? We had Sports Day last week.
- What did you do for Earth Day? We had an assembly and sang a song promising to take care of the earth. We’re going to start recycling at our school and homes.
- Where do you eat lunch?
Some of us eating lunch during recess
- Next week we are going to go to Magic Island for a field trip. Do you go to any field trips? Where? What would be your dream field trip?
- How do you have birthday parties at your school?
- We play outside. Do you play outside? Do you play outside when it snows?
- When it snows hard, do you cancel school?
- How do you go to your house after school, in a car or a bus or walking or on a scooter or a bike?
- How do you play on the playground? What kind of equipment do you have?
April 7, 2015
by Denise Krebs
2 Comments
Skyping with Iowa
I just got off a Skype call with our penpal class in Iowa. We had a nice conversation. It was 5:00 p.m. here in Bahrain, and 9:00 a.m. in Iowa.
If we were to Skype when my kids are in school, our Iowa friends would have to get up during the night because we go to school between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Iowa time. (Of course, in Bahrain it’s 7:00 am to 2:00 pm when we go to school.) It’s just not very convenient for our classes to talk in live time, but we’re having fun figuring out other ways to communicate, including snail mail.
Students asked me some interesting questions I didn’t know all the answers to, but I’m finding out the answers for them! I love to learn new things!
1. Does the Gulf have sharks?
My husband was right, there are sharks here. Here’s an article about sharks in the Gulf, written in 2011. It tells us there aren’t any Great White sharks in the Gulf. (That’s good news.) But there are at least 29 different kinds of sharks here. Here’s a video of sharks off the coast of Qatar, which is not far from Bahrain.
2. How big is Bahrain?
I said Bahrain would fit into Sioux County two times, but I was wrong. I figured it out again, and it would fit in two and a half times! It would look something like this:
3. How old is Bahrain?
As I said, it is very old. Like biblical times old. We aren’t far from the fertile crescent. Have you studied that yet in K-1? Anyway, a lot of history started there, so we are really old. Here’s a picture of a little copper bird that was found in Bahrain around 2300 BC.
I liked seeing this sweet little copper bird that is over 4,300 years old! Amazing!
This fort is old. It has many layers of forts. The oldest layer also dates to 2300 B.C.
Well, Kindergarteners and first graders! It was great talking to you today!
May you be ingenious, innovative, and always learning and making, just like Ali did in our story!
God bless you!
March 25, 2015
by Denise Krebs
0 comments
Answers from Bahrain to Iowa
We have new pen pals from Iowa. They have asked us a lot of questions. We will keep answering these questions over the break.
Parents, if any student wants to help, just pick a question and send the answer to Mrs. Denise, and she will post it here! Thanks!
- How old are you (students in class)?
We are 5 or 6 years old.
- How many students are in your class?
We have 26 in each class.
- May we see a picture of your class?
We’re working on a video for you!
- Is your classroom the only one?
There are two KG2 classes.
- Do you students have Classroom Jobs?
Yes, we do. There are table jobs. You bring the basket of colors, pencils, erasers, and books to the table for the students at our table.
We have a new job–the person who writes the date on the whiteboard each day. That person gets to do the job for one week.
We all do the cleaning up job. We take turns doing the Calendar job.
- Do you do the Calendar each day?
We count the days. We are now on 123. We put a square on the day of the month. We tell what the weather is like.
- What is the weather like? Do you ever get snow to build a snowman?
We will never build a snowman in Bahrain. The low temperature is in the 50s F.
However, did you know you can go snow skiing in Dubai, which is a large city not far from us? You don’t even have to wait until winter. How do you suppose they do that?
- How do you get to school? By bus?
Some of us come to school by bus, but not yellow school buses. We take large vans like the picture shows. A few of us come with our nannies or a driver. More come with our mom or dad. No one walks to school, except for Mrs. Denise.
15 passenger vans are used for private bus service
- Do you use Daily 5?
No, we don’t use Daily 5. Most of the day we are in Arabic class. We come to English class for 1-2 hours a day. We practice sounds and writing letters. We sing. We build. We write.
- Do you have P.E., Art, Music, and/or Library?
Yes, we have all of those. We call P.E. Sports, though. Our teacher is Ms. Fatima. We have art with Ms. Sameera. We have music with Ms. Anna and library with Ms. Andrea.
- What have you learned (this school year)?
ABCs, numbers, to read, to write sentences. We learned new songs, like “I Think You’re Wonderful” and “These are My Sight Words.” We learned sight words. We learned from each other during show and tell time.
- What do you like about school?
Some of the things we like are:
- reading books
- drawing
- writing
- Arabic and English homework
- playing
- birthday and other parties
- teachers
- art
- show and tell
- 100 Day party
- ABCDs
- sight words
- all my classmates
- all the school
- How many days of school have you had? Have you had your 100th day?
Yes, we had our 100th day of school. We had a party. Here are some pictures from the 100 Day celebration.
29 May – it is Day 140 today.
- Have you learned about Community Workers?
Yes, we dressed up like community workers. It was also who we wanted to be when we grew up. We were police, teachers, artists, fire fighters, nurses and doctors.
- How good are you students at listening?
Mrs. Denise said some days we listen better than others!
- What happens if you are good or naughty?
Sometimes we have a time out, or we go see the supervisor when we are naughty. When we are good we learn a lot and have fun creating and producing!
March 12, 2015
by Denise Krebs
2 Comments
Our New Pen Pals
Hello!
We are excited to have new blogging pen pals in Iowa. Our penpals are students in Ms. Swanson’s Menagerie. They’ll be blogging at this link, and we’ll be blogging here.
We are kindergarteners in the wonderful Kingdom of Bahrain. Most of us have Arabic as our first language, though a few of us started our lives speaking different languages, like Farsi or English.
Did you know people who learn additional languages tend to grow bigger brains? Mrs. Denise (that’s what we call Mrs. Krebs) tells us about this brain research all the time. She thinks that some of your class know more than one language too. That’s great! She hopes you ALL will learn English and Spanish. When you know two languages it will make learning three and four languages easier too.
We like to remember that our brain is growing as we continue to learn.
This week we had parent-teacher conferences. Mrs. Denise told our parents we were doing better than last time and learning very much. We also had an English book fair. Many of us bought books to read at home. Sometimes we have an Arabic book fair too.
In one week we’ll have our school carnival. We’ll be sure to share pictures with you!
We look forward to getting to know you as we blog together!
Mrs. Denise and all the KG2 students