The first snow is falling and our students are getting ready for their Christmas concert performances. We are looking forward to seeing many of you at the concert and this year we also welcome parents to spend some time in their child’s classroom, mingling and meeting their teachers. GEA classes are already filling up for the new school year of 2020 and we are so excited for all the great things to come! We have several improvements and updates to present to you and we are sure that this coming year will be the best so far! We are also happy to announce that almost all of our teachers will be staying with us next year so students can feel comfortable with many familiar faces.
Santa Letters
Next to the entrance there is a mailbox to Santa. Students are encouraged to write letters to Santa at home and put it in the mailbox next to the big snowman.
On Saturday, December 14, students are invited to gather at GEA at 1pm. We will practice some Christmas Carols and drink hot chocolate, then we will walk over to Noble Hospital, where we will deliver holiday greeting cards that our students have been making, and sing Christmas Carols for the patients who are there. Then we will walk back to GEA by 3pm. Parents are welcome to come along with, or just drop your child off and pick them up at 3pm. It will be a fun time and a great way to learn about giving back to our community and sharing the holiday spirit! This is a special service project that our Grade 4 students in Calgary class initiated, planned, and are leading. We are so proud of them!
Bathroom renovation
During the Christmas break December 23rd-January 1st, all of the GEA bathrooms will be renovated to make them cleaner, brighter and even more kids friendly.
New K4 and K5 classes
On January 6th we are opening up a new 4 year old class and also a new 5 year old class. The classes are almost full but if you have a younger sibling that you would like to join the class, please contact GEA.
We want to thank all of the Moms for their patience with our new policy this year about bus changes. It helped to make our bus and afterschool process much quicker and smoother! We did collect a fee of 10,000krw each time someone had to make a non-emergency same-day change, and now we are donating those fees collected to the Angels Haven orphanage. This is a cause that is close to our hearts because Jenny’s Mom, Susanne, grew up in an orphanage in Seoul for a few years before being adopted to Sweden. Susanne will be visiting us this month and we will visit the orphanage together to bring them holiday greeting cards made by our Kindergarten students, and the 180,000krw that we collected in same day bus change fees.
Special thanks
To RK, a K4 student in Argentina1 class, for decorating our entrance with the amazing Halloween and now Christmas balloons! All the students are very excited about Christmas now!
Best mannered class of November
Congratulations to Brazil class for being the best mannered class of November. Our young students have shown us how to be good friends, respectful to their teachers and excited about learning English everyday. We are so proud of you and we had a lot of fun in the baking class with Jenny and Andy Teacher!
Denmark1 was our Best Mannered class for October. Frederick wrote a very nice letter about the party we had!
Sophia in Denmark2 class had the high score in the whole school on this month’s Star Reading test. She is reading at a 4th grade level! USA classes and all K7 classes are taking these tests each month to measure their reading comprehension progress, and they are making huge improvements. Nearly all of our students are reading in the 98th or 99th percentile of their American counterparts, and most are reading 2 or 3 grade levels above their own!
Happy Holidays!
Love from,
Jenny & Andy Knopp and the whole GEA family
