​Our grade ones and twos wowed us again with their game creation skills, this time creating a game about road safety. The objective of the game was to get their character to collect all of their lost school stationery while avoiding moving cars on the busy road. They mastered this new approach on learning about the importance of road safety and we are so proud of them! 

This term our grade 6’s and 7’s worked together in groups to create their own businesses. We were all so impressed with the amazing ideas our pupils had, anything from a new cell phone shaped as a pear to running shoes that play music as you run. One group even focused on offering investment plans to young adults! As new business owners our learners also had to design creative and unique business logos, write up a basic business plan and design their own business cards in Microsoft Publisher.  In order to promote their new business ventures learners had to write up a newspaper article describing all there is to know about their businesses. It has been fascinating to watch them take their knowledge about the real world and apply it in the classroom. We are excited to see what our young entrepreneurs will produce in the future!

​The grade 3 to 5’s are still busy with their space projects and we decided to introduce them to the wonderful world of photo editing. Sticking to our space theme we gave our students the opportunity to create an alien. All they needed was a photo of a chameleon and our Photo Simple software. After using the crop, resize basic and special effects they were left with some unique aliens any space explorer would be thrilled to discover! 

Thanks to our pupils at Ruimsig Montessori for the awesome pictures!

​We are putting our pre-schoolers’ knowledge of the five senses to the test by creating a pairing game. By using the 2Simple DIY app on the iPads, the preschoolers import clipart pictures on the five senses as well as the objects they would use them on. The app does the rest by taking our project and turning it into a pairing game. The objective is that the pairs need to be matched. The cards are laid out in a grid face down. The pre-schoolers tap on two cards at a time to flip them over. They then need to match the pairs, e.g. Ear = music, Nose = flower. We are so proud of our pre-schoolers as they really impress us with their understanding of the five senses.

​“Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad, and that's why I call you dad, because you are so special to me. You taught me the game and you taught me how to play it right.” Wade Boggs

To all the Dads out there, we would like to wish a happy Father’s day. Thank you for all the dedication, inspiration, words of warmth, motivation and unconditional love. You are our true mentors and guardians.
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We wanted to give our pre-schoolers the opportunity to take a new approach in making their Father’s day cards by using our 2Publish software. We are very proud of the little works of art and hope that they will bring joy to the fathers everywhere.

​Facial Features…this week’s focus for our Grade 1 & 2 learners. In 2DIY, a do it yourself program our learners learnt how to label the different facial features. For example: eyes, nose, mouth etc. They had to draw a picture of their face and write the correct labels. Learners could add their own creative touch by using different paint tools, colours and shapes. Once they had finished drawing their faces, we then proceeded to drag the respective label to the correct place on the face. This activity was beneficial for learner’s identification and spelling skills and created a great platform for a future lesson when learners will be learning how to label the face in Afrikaans. 

​You can play our version of the game by clicking below:

​“Outer Space” is term 2’s topic of choice for our Grade 3-5’s mini project, which they are researching using a search engine called “Sweet Search”. Sweet Search is a reliable source of information for our students to use as all of the results have been evaluated and approved by research experts, librarians and teachers on the Sweet Search team. Our learners are now able to use key words in order to find information that is relevant to the topic of Space. Their research was focused on the 8 planets… yes there are now 8! Pluto is considered too small to be a planet and is now classified as a Dwarf planet. Learners will be using the information gathered to complete various activities in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint. In addition to researching facts about the different planets our Grade 3-5 learners will also be learning about Earth’s orbit around the Sun and will be creating an animation to illustrate this. 

The second term has already snuck up on us and we thought we would ease the back-to-school blues for our 6 to 8 year olds by introducing them to the exciting world of game design. Using 2Simple software, we gave each aspiring game designer a chance to create their own version of Snake. They had an opportunity to create a background, design characters and place targets and “bad guys” on their platform.  Then it was time for each game designer to test and play their new creation. The 6 to 8 year olds then got to test each other’s games and voted for their favourite game.  They really impressed us with their creativity and competitive spirit and we are excited that maybe one day they will apply it in the gaming industry.

The first term has whizzed by for both our 3 term and 4 term schools, but as they say “time flies when you’re having fun!” and that has certainly been exactly what our learners have had in computers so far. During the first term our Grade 1 & 2’s were introduced to computer through an interactive PowerPoint presentation and quiz, and learnt how to place their fingers on the keyboard for touch typing. It’s amazing to see how quickly these young ones can pick up the ability to touch type! Other than tap tapping away on keyboards, our learners played around in paint programs, using their creative skills to draw pictures of their daily routine before school in the mornings. In addition to being creative, learners practiced their orientation and direction skills as a foundation for learning coding. This was very enjoyable as they pretended to be different characters including a space trooper in a space themed background to Little Red Riding Hood in a fairytale themed background!

​Welcome to the 2016 school year! We have started the year off with a bang, with 13 new schools joining the Little Brains family. We are so excited to be meeting all the new faces and seeing our old friends again. It has been a busy first two weeks of demo’s at our preschools, and diving in to our creative and exciting content for our older children. Everyone has just started to settle into the new routines and classes and our teachers at Little Brains are all looking forward to another wonderful year of growing and learning with all of our pupils and their parents.