Monkey Puzzle

We had a great day today with our friends in Flowers Class and welcomed back one of our wonderful friends who took a short vacation overseas. Later in the morning we had our second ‘Show & tell’ this week which we shall talk about later.  On the table this morning we saw the remaining Rangoli papers with the colored rice and the big pot of glue. There are only a few of us left who have yet to make our own personal Rangoli. We are looking forward to taking these home to show our mommies and daddies. On the small table we saw a ‘balance game’ which looked a little like a tree with colored pieces to put on the top. The game is a ‘balance’ game where we had to take turns adding pieces to the ‘tree top’ and make sure it remains balanced. If the top falls over the game comes to an end. On the main table with the Rangoli we also saw the remaining pages for our class book with the letters C, K, E, H, R, M and D. We looked through lots of magazines for things beginning with these sounds / letters and cut them out to stick on the paper. The puppet theater was again popular today on the main carpet with many of us making up stories using the ‘Monkey Puzzle’ pieces e.g. the monkey and butterfly headbands, an elephant toy, a snake, a caterpillar etc. After packing away the toys today we all made a circle holding our friend’s hands and sat down. We noticed on the ‘science table’ the seed pods we collected recently from the park had split open and Darren told us how when he arrived this morning the seeds were spread across the classroom. We wondered why the seed pods would do this and soon realized that if the seeds are thrown away from the tree they were more likely to get more sunlight. It was then time for our ‘Show & Tell’ with one of our friends presenting for us. We enjoyed guessing what he had brought and had lots of ideas including: toy car, Fish, food, leaves and a shell but it turned out to be something quite different. He had brought a wonderful photo of himself and his family sitting in a restaurant with lots and lots of red bowls in front of them. He told us the photo was taken in Iwate and that it showed them having eaten lots and lots of small bowls of Wankosoba. These are famous in the Iwate area and our friend managed to eat a huge 45 bowls of them. Usually men eat 70 to 80 of them, women around 50 to 60 bowls while our friend managed to eat 45 bowls of noodles. He also had a small wooden commemorative plaque showing the total ‘45’ that he had eaten. We had time for some questions too and discovered that he had flown on ANA to Iwate, had the photo taken by a member of staff in the restaurant and that he felt very happy after eating so much. We found more split seed pods in the park today and when we returned to the classroom looked at a famous book called ‘The Princess and the Pea’. With Pooja we then looked at the book ‘Monkey Puzzle’ and acted out the story and practiced our lines. We are hoping to put on a performance of this story in December.

All our Love,

Darren & Pooja