Hokey, Pokey song
Good morning everyone! Early morning, the rain was pouring so hard. So, we had to put on our raincoats, rain boots together with our umbrellas. We said goodbye to our parents and did our morning jobs with some help from our teachers. Next, we moved to our tables and saw a long sheet of white paper that we could paint on today. We used our dot and Posca markers to scribble and make beautiful patterns around it. It was also very nice to practice our fine motor skills by pressing and practicing our hand-eye coordination. Our play dough was on the other table and we started using it for our finger and hand exercises. We pounded, rolled and kneaded the dough as much as we could and then our teachers also showed us how to stretch our play dough carefully. As we stretched it long, we also noticed that the play dough was getting thinner and lighter in texture. What a beautiful learning experience it was because we played and learned something new today.
On our kitchen play area, we sat down at the small table and pretended that we’re cutting the onigiri and apples with our toy knives. It was also a good practice for our fine motor skills development. We showed our teachers how good we were in cutting and chopping our toys. Then, our teachers ate them and we were giggling because they can be so silly when eating our food toys (pretend play, teachers tend to exaggerate how they love to eat what children cooked for them). On our carpet area, we had some cars and Lego blocks for construction. We also lay the Tokyo map down on the floor. We moved our cars and imagined that we’re driving around the town. Our library was also very busy because we still had some Halloween books to look at even though we just finished our party yesterday; we’re still interested in learning about more characters from Halloween. We saw “Dracula, mummy and some little monsters”. The scary witch was quite popular because most of our friends know her.
Before our snack time, we sang songs about our face and body. This month is going to be about “Taking care of my body”. We’re still going to discuss “kindness moments” and we encourage you to send more photos. Our focus for this month as well is going to be “Celebration of Joy”. Our friends are always welcome to bring their favorite things/picture/toy to show and share with everyone. We also talked about the rainy day and we sang, “It’s rainy today”. We wanted to play outside but the rain was just pouring so hard. Our teachers asked us, “What do you bring to school when it’s raining?” Our friends said, “We can bring an umbrella, raincoat and rain boots”.
For our second part of our circle time, we did some music and movement activities. We listened to the piano because each type of music led us to specific movements. We jumped, lay down on the floor and pretended to sleep, ran around, flew and imagined that we’re birds and crawled like snakes. Goh, Sayaka and Chiaki were all there to play with us for the rest of the time. We also got up on their backs and imagined they were like horses going around the classroom. We are very, very lucky to have such energetic teachers as well. After that, we sat down and played with Mr. Potato Head. First, we looked inside Mr. Potato Head but we didn’t see anything. It was empty. So, our teachers helped us to put something on him. After we finished, we were so proud because we’re able to attach his body parts together. Then, we all stood and danced with our teachers again. This time, we sang, “The Hokey, Pokey song”. We all got tired of dancing and moving so we sat down again for cooling down before our lunch time.
Thank you so much Ohana for another great day at school. See you all again tomorrow! Have a fabulous day!
Lots of love,
All the energetic children from Buds class 2016-2017