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Lemon Cupcakes

 There is just something about lemon cake desserts that make people smile, and these cupcakes are no exception as they are both fun and elegant at the same time. Once cool, top the cupcakes with dairy-free frosting of your choice.

Makes 12 large cupcakes

 Steps to Make It

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners and set aside. In a small bowl, mix together the soymilk and lemon juice and set aside.
  2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and lemon zest.
  3. In another bowl, using an electric hand mixer at a medium speed setting, cream together the soy margarine and sugar until fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add the eggs and applesauce and beat until incorporated. Switch down the speed to low and add in half of the dry ingredients, beating until combined, followed by the soymilk mixture. Add the remaining dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
  4. Pour the batter into the prepared cupcake cups and bake about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

 Kindergarten News 

Over the past six months, we have focused on friendship building: At the beginning of the year, various activities were introduced in the room to promote friendship. Most of this activity involves the whole class or small groups. We have embedded three group section into our daily routines which involve the whole class participation. In the next half of the year, I will be focusing on children building skills to cooperate with others, promoting reciprocal relationship, encouraging decision making and children contributing to fair decision making.

Another aspect of learning we focus on was letter recognition: we began by focusing on a letter of the alphabet each week. Then Miss Dy provided the children with some hands-on activities such as making letter A using playdough or drawing letter shapes on the sand. When the children showed more confidence in their alphabet, we focused on children names. All the children engaged in identifying the first letter of their name and for children who showed a higher understanding of the alphabet, Miss Dy encouraged them to start writing their full name. In the next half of the year, we will be focusing on children writing their first name and identifying their last name. I will also be focusing on more drawing, colouring, and some early writing skills.

Colour recognition was embedded into our daily transition, all the children identify the colour of their clothes every morning during the transition time. We also engaged in choosing a colour each week to explore which ended two months ago. Most of the children have a sound understanding of the colours. However, we will continue with our colour exploration in science. In this last half of the year, we will be focusing on identifying primary colours and mixing primary colours.

Shapes: Most of the children are confident in identifying their shapes.

Number and counting: Most of the children showed confident in their counting skills. However, I continue to challenge children's knowledge by increasing the number to count. Most children can now count from 1 to 20. Also, I will be promoting some adding skills for the rest of the year.

All parent should have access to their Child EDUCA. If you do not, can you please notify me (DY) or Mau. Pictures and learning stories are posted on EDUCA daily. I will be starting a library for the kindy room starting on the 3rd of August. Children can borrow a book and take it home for a maximum of one week and then return it to the centre. This library aims to encourage parent participation and expose children to real-world ideas. If you would like to donate some books towards this, please give them to Mau or myself.

I would like to thank all the parent for your support so far, this year has been a roller coaster. But your open communication, friendliness and positivity made it much easier for us to support families and all the children.

As always, we are always available

Thanks

Kindy Team