NUACHTÁN KINDER | December 2020

Perfect Binomial: ‘Family – School’

School is a place for meeting and developing constant interpersonal relationships between families, teachers, and students on a day-to-day basis.

The relationship created and established between school and family is very important in students’ early childhood; the influence that it could have on their development is more significant and transcendental than it is believed.

When children begin their schooling process, they go through a stage of bonding with the adults they interact with at school. The relationships developed are based on attachment, which is a fundamental affective bond in the first years of life.

These links are necessary to promote healthy development of the students Emotional Intelligence and allow them to feel confident and secure during the learning process.

The healthy development of students begins with the fulfillment of their needs, not only physiological (food, hygiene, etc.) but also love, affection, esteem and feeling part of a group.

If children notice an environment of trust, listening, respect, companionship and well-being between the two most important environments in their lives (family and school) we will nourish them with positive feelings that will be the basis of an emotional, healthy and balanced affective life, essential for the relationships that they will establish in the future, both emotional and professional.

Therefore, at Celta Kindergarten, we worry about promoting a harmonious family-school relationship since it is vital for the development of our children.

The benefits of learning a second language in the early childhood

As many of you know, our school has a bilingual program starting from nursery, making children to deal with the English language from an early age with a first approach to vocabulary through songs, games and activities that allow them to incorporate the vocabulary while they are exposed to listening the language.

Children who study a foreign language increase their general cognitive development, they will do better on tests, will be more creative, have a better self-esteem and sense of achievement in school.

Students who can speak a second language have better listening skills, sharper memory, they are more creative, better at solving complex problems and exhibit greater cognitive flexibility.

From elementary school to college, foreign language students show better scores on standardized tests. Therefore, the results of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) show that those who have studied another language for four years or more obtain better scores, both in the verbal part and mathematical part of the test.

Researchers from the School of Psychology of the University of Kent (United Kingdom) show results published by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) where they analyzed the brain images of a group of volunteers, bilingual, non-bilingual but knowledgeable about two languages, and a third monolingual group, observing that the first two groups had higher degrees of myelination of axons. What does this mean? greater integrity in the white matter of the brain, which provides improvements in the efficiency of the transmission of information or knowledge. That means that the brain structurally changes, allowing a better, more effective process that allows information to be transmitted and knowledge to be fixed more easily. These results are not repeated in the case of the group of people who only spoke one language.

These benefits on the brain when learning English as a second language in our case, can occur even in adulthood without permanent use of it. Thus, learning another language, from an early age or at an advanced age, brings about the same structural changes in the white matter of the brain.The difference is that learning the language from an early age means being able to obtain these benefits and use them throughout our academic training, which translates into greater achievements and therefore a higher sense of confidence and self-esteem.

The importance of Teaching Science in Preschool  

Children, from an early age, integrate their knowledge with the experiences they acquire in the daily life at home, with their family and at school, building their own learning. In their daily life, there are many things and experiences that can favor a scientific attitude towards knowledge. Observing daily life events, such as watching the rain fall, a rainbow appearing, an ice cream melting, a ball floating in the water, among others, provide the opportunity to learn, being those experiences a source of motivation in most cases.

At Celta School, the science class facilitates the approach to different phenomena, we create activities or learning experiences that promote new, different, and significative knowledge. Students can choose their materials, organize themselves into groups or work in teams and experiment, observe, manipulate, reflect, create hypotheses; children can develop their scientific thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to experiment with the objects and materials around them from an early age.

By teaching science, we lead children to observe experimental phenomena and situations in a special way, and this will make them able to generalize their own conclusions. For this reason, experimenting is the best way to develop scientific skills in children, creating these situations they approach natural sciences. During this process, they develop thinking and research skills, such as understanding and analyzing. Children question themselves, propose hypotheses, develop experimental designs, test, verify their hypotheses, reach to conclusions, so new questions arise allowing the process of inquiry to be restarted. Finally, thanks to the learning experiences carried out, children can understand principles, laws, and natural phenomena.

Thanks to our IB programme, all this is carried out in an interdisciplinary way working with the different subjects, not only science, but integrating mathematics, technology, and language, too.

The importance of having routines and good habits in children

Routines are patterns of behavior that help us maintain control over our surroundings and acquiring good habits is a great complement that can help us maintain an emotional balance.

Children do not know the order of things, therefore they need the parents (adults) help – we teach them to organize their lives through routines (activities that are done every day in the same way).

How can we develop a routine?

• Have established schedules of day-to-day activities
• Carry out an established procedure; every activity must have a beginning and an end before moving on to another.
• Establish in advance the objectives you want to achieve (plan)

It is important to start from a young age to develop habits, the main ones are: nourishment, hygiene, and sleep

Development of sleep habit in children:

• Set a fixed time to put your child to bed
• Avoid stimulating activities right before bedtime
• Maintain a sleeping time routine

Healthy eating habits in children:

• Avoid distractors, cell phone, electronic tablet, or TV. They are not good companions during meals, the child will not be aware of what he is tasting.
• Punishments are not a teaching tool, avoid forcing to eat, punishments associated with food, that can decrease permanent acceptance and increases negative perception.
• Remember that the variety in the food groups is the key to enjoying and eating with joy.

Good hygiene habits:

• Set schedules
• Be constant
• Do not sabotage what has been accomplished
• Praise when your child achieves goals

Remember, with patience and care we can achieve significant lessons.

The importance of literacy at preschool age

Reading and writing are skills that we can learn from an early age and, when acquired, bring great benefits to the intellectual development of children. Reading, in addition to fostering imagination and creativity, stimulates the language process and enriches vocabulary, helping to consolidate oral expression.

Writing as well as reading can be acquired from an early age, although it is a maturing process, and it requires appropriate stimulation to achieve adequate development; that is why it is important to prepare children with fine and thick motor exercises through play to facilitate this process. By stimulating this process and gradually acquiring reading, children will be able to express their thoughts, their creativity, and organize their ideas that will gradually be expressed in writing.

At Colegio Celta, specifically in preschool, we are interested in the process of acquiring literacy, because it is essential in the growth and intellectual development of young children.

There are different methodologies to promote the acquisition of reading and writing, nevertheless we consider that since this is a process that will be part of children´s lives, it is important to learn to read and write using experiences that are meaningful for them.

At Celta School, children learn to write and read through their own name. Learning to read and write through their own name is full of positive meaning since it is the first text that children want to recognize (read) and write when they start this process. Later, they will be interested in the name of their parents, siblings, classmates, and friends. This methodology offers many conventional spellings, which could be compared, differentiated, classified, and will allow children to communicate with others through writing and reading.

The early learner in the PYP

The PYP acknowledges the unique needs of early learners, aged 3 to 6 years. It is a distinguishing feature of the programme which recognizes that learners in this age range require approaches to learning and to teaching that honor their developmental stage, and the importance of play as the vehicle for inquiry. Since experiences during the early years lay the foundation for all future learning, the PYP framework allows educators to make choices to best enable learners to flourish.

Early learning in the PYP is a holistic learning experience that integrates socio-emotional, physical, and cognitive development. In the PYP classroom, it takes place in dynamic environments that promote play, discovery, and exploration.

© International Baccalaureate Organization, 2005-2020.

Dates to remember:

DECEMBER 4th – Christmas tree lighting

DECEMBER 4th – Abriga un Corazón

DECEMBER 11th – CTE

DECEMBER 18th – Christmas Event | Celta’s Community

In December we celebrate:

• 5th – Bastian Gaytán
• 5th – Mateo Bermúdez
• 11th – Miss Maggie
• 13th – Miss Deysi
• 18th – Alexa Estrada
• 18th – Mauricio Pineda
• 22nd – Miss Rachel