Daily Archives: May 18, 2012

I don’t know why an International School with British heritage celebrates the American Mother’s Day, but it is a bonus for me this year as I have received twice as many cards and presents!  British Mother’s Day is in March and American Mother’s Day is in May.

This morning, BISS hosted a “tea party” (at 9.00am for Oliver’s class) to celebrate the Mum’s.  We entered a beautifully decorated hall with tables laid ready with tea and cake.  The children walked in and we were treated to a performance of Do-Ray-Me, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and a Chinese song.  After this brilliant show, I got to sit with Oliver, drink tea and eat cake for 15 minutes before he went back to class and I went off to work!  He also presented me with a beautiful picture of a flower that he had painted – very impressionistic:

Oliver’s masterpiece – blue flower on brown background

First sports activity – balance the hoop on your head

It has been a busy week at BISS (British International School, Shanghai)!  Wednesday May 16th was Sports Day for the Kindergarten and Infant classes.  It was a beautiful sunny day.

The school is organized into Houses: Dragon = Red, Monkeys = Green, Pandas = Blue and Tigers = Yellow.  Isabelle and Oliver are both in Dragons.  Not only do all the competitions (like Sports Day) earn you points for your house, but you can also earn points for effort in class, test results, and displaying attributes of the school values.  The members of the winning house at the end of the year get a special prize.  Dragons are leading the board at the moment!

The set up was in the middle of the football field and fenced off – no parent interaction allowed!!  I especially liked that children from the older years were helping with each activity – they were great role models for the little ones and handled each group with expertise, encouragement and patience.

Hurdles (infant style!)

Parents walked around the outside as their children rotated around the activities – a perfect set up!  Oliver started off with balancing a hoop on his head around a cone and back, moved on to a water challenge (scooping from one bucket then running to the end and filling with what is left!)  This picture shows him navigating the hurdles. 

Balancing the ball

Each activity took about 2-3 minutes and we were outside for about an hour.  Here you can see Oliver balancing a ball on the raquet between 2 cones.  If you look closely, you can see that he actually has the ball wedged in the triangle at the base of the raquet!!  His best activity was throwing beanbags into a hoop.  The furthest hoop scored 2 points per bag and nearly all of his throws made it into that one!!

Almost finished!

The last picture shows him finishing the activity round: running across a beam, pulling the big hoop over his body and then running around the cone.  I love this action shot – tongue hanging out (a common theme from Oliver when he is concentrating!) and his cap on sideways.  He never seems to want to wear his cap correctly, it is always sideways or backwards.  He did so well at all the events and managed to score some good points for Dragon.  In fact, Dragon  House won the day!  A quick cuddle with him after the event and then he was whisked away for an ice-lolly reward.