ISY Elementary Blog

Elementary Update – May 1st, 2020

Sandy Sheppard, Elementary School Principal

Dear all,

Thank you to all the parents who joined the virtual coffee morning yesterday. The chat was recorded and can be found here.

 In addition, here is the link to the presentation, there are some valuable resources which you may want to access.

Today, the ISY Padauk tree came out in flower as it does annually.  Have a look on our Facebook page for photos!
Thank you to the children who took part in the outdoor scavenger hunt and for sending in the photos. See them below. Look out also in this blog for another scavenger hunt.

Wishing you all the best.

Sandy Sheppard

 

Filling the Bucket

IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
Elementary School Welcome Back Slides
We wanted to welcome everyone back to school and let you know how much we missed our community and how ready we were to continue with Virtual Learning. See the slides here.
PE Newsletter
Mr Wyatt and Ms Lisa put together their first PE Newsletter, this newsletter has important information about the PE program and can be found here.
 A Musical Message
Just in case you missed it here is the video made by the faculty at ISY.  Wherever you are in the world, you can count on us!  It’s on both the Facebook page and the YouTube Channel. Enjoy.
Message from the Director
Dr. Hedger’s third message for the whole community can be viewed here.
Dr. Hedger talks about reimagining school and our commitment to reopening.

UPCOMING DATE

6th May – Global Citizens, Virtual Wednesday

4th June – Report Cards

10th June – Last day of school for the 19-20 school year

EMAIL CONTACTS

Principal – ssheppard@isyedu.org

Counselor – escounselor@isyedu.org

Office – office@isyedu.org

COUNSELOR’S CORNER

Resilience: A Life Skill

Resilience is the ability to bounce back or adapt when things don’t go the way we hoped.  In unprecedented times, such as these, certainly there are many things that aren’t going as we had once planned or expected.  Fortunately, resilience is a skill we can nurture in ourselves and teach to our children.

Resilience has three important elements, control, challenge and commitment.  A resilient person focuses on aspects that they can control.  We may not be able to control this pandemic but we can control our attitude in addressing it.  Challenge: resilient people see obstacles as challenges for growth not affirmations of inability.  They are not paralzed by failure but are energized, enabling them to overcome whatever barriers hinder their success.  Finally resilient people are committed.  They set goals and plan.  They dedicate time and energy to all areas of their life, work, family and social connections.

So how can we nurture these qualities and skills in our children?


Control: Provide opportunities for your child to risk.  Allow them to try new things.  As parents, sometimes we want to protect our kids by ensuring their success.  Although well intentioned, often this doesn’t allow our children to develop independent skills.  Skills that enable them to identify what aspects of the task were in their control and what areas were beyond them.  

Challenge: Let your child see you fail. Highlight your everyday mistakes.  Demonstrate to them how these mini “failures” are opportunities for you to grow and learn.  Failure isn’t the end, it’s only the beginning.

Commitment:  Demonstrate to your children your personal goals and how you achieve them.  It might be your daily exercise, sleep routine or healthy eating habits.  Demonstrating a hard working, dedicated attitude provides an example that can influence them for years to come.

Resilient individuals have a positive attitude toward the future, they tend to achieve more goals, they have better control over their emotional reactions, they maintain healthy relationships and they express empathy and compassion. 

If you have any questions or concerns, regarding this or other topics, please feel free to contact me, Ms. Patty at escousnelor@isyedu.org.  I am happy to connect over email or in an online chat.

Helpful Links:

https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/resilience

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/resilience.htm

https://www.psycom.net/build-resilience-children

Virtual Learning

Please feel free to send in virtual learning photos that I can put in this blog. Below you can see some of the pictures from our Global Citizens, Virtual Wednesday this week. 

Compassionate Chinthes

On Wednesday, our wonderfully compassionate students made a plan to show compassion to those around them with love, fun, and by being helpful. 

They also had a bit of creative fun by drawing a flat chinthe, making a bucket to fill with love and kindness, pretending to be a teacher and coming up with lyrics to a new ISY school song!

We love watching the students come in on Wednesday. They are so creative and compassionate. Next week we are going to see how courageous they are! Here is a link to more of the pictures.

In case you are looking for something to do as a family see the new scavenger hunt below. If you take part please feel free to take a photo and send it to me at my email above. The photos will be featured in next weeks blog.

 

Scavenger Hunt fun

I can’t wait to see your pictures

Previous Elementary School Posts

Elementary Update September 27

Elementary Update September 27

The teachers enjoyed the Compassion Conference on Friday. They were able to learn not only new ideas but be inspired by our keynote speaker, Wilma Derksen. I hope that many of you were also able to attend Wilma’s parent talk this week.

Elementary Update September 20

Elementary Update September 20

This week on Wednesday I visited the ISY Nay Pyi Taw campus where there are lots of fabulous things happening.
At ISY we continue enjoying our learning.

Elementary School Blog- Sept 13

Elementary School Blog- Sept 13

It seemed that the rain this week purposely chose to come down at break and dismissal times. The rain never hampers our fun here at ISY though and in between the rain we had lots of creative fun outdoors this week (see pictures below).

Elementary School Blog – Sept 6

Elementary School Blog – Sept 6

Dear Parents, It has been another fantastic week at ISY. We have really settled into the school year and we look forward to sharing with you all the wonderful things that are happening in our classrooms over the coming weeks.

Elementary School Blog – August 30

Elementary School Blog – August 30

Thank you for the great turn out at the Back to School event this week. We appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedules to join us. A good home and school connection is so important for student learning.

Elementary School Blog – August 23

Elementary School Blog – August 23

Dear all,
This has been a wonderful first full week at ISY. The students have settled into their classrooms an are enjoying school life. In particular the new playground is proving to be very popular.