Our Christmas/Channukah tree

Today was a different day in Petals Class because we celebrated Anneke and Maddy’s birthday. They are our November birthday children. For the party We were included in some of the preparation for snack time; we helped make the guacamole. Anneke’s mum showed us how to make guacamole because it is one of the special foods from Mexico which is where she comes from. We saw avocadoes, onion, cilantro, tomatoes and salt and pepper on the table. These were the ingredients that we used to make it. When we were ready for snack time, the guacamole and corn chips was one of the delicious birthday snacks for us. Maddy’s mum, Stephanie brought along beautiful cupcakes for snack time. She read a book called “The Eye Book” by Dr. Seuss which we loved listening to and looking at. She left it in our classroom for us to keep in our library. After the party, Anneke and Maddy gave us each an “eye ring”. You put the ring on one of your fingers and there are two eyes on either side of your finger. We want to thank Stephanie and Ana for coming to school for the celebration and for the delicious treats for our snack time.

    We really ate a lot at snack time and many of us didn’t want to eat much lunch at lunch time because we were still so full. The other thing that was different in our schedule today was that we didn’t play outside in the park. Our teachers think that if we had been able to play outside in the park, then we would have probably burnt off some of the food from snack time; and there would have been a little more space in our tummies for lunch…..perhaps. Our teachers understood that we were too full to eat a lot of lunch so there were many left overs for them. We think that they too were so full so maybe they couldn’t eat the left overs either. We sang our “When you’re happy and you know it” song and did some actions to it. Whenever we have a birthday, we add in “shout happy birthday” and “whisper happy birthday”. We also sang “Three little candles” and blew out the pretend candles together and we counted three in many languages. When Maddy and Anneke blew their candles out, we all sang “happy birthday to you” in English and Japanese. At the every end of the party we went to have snack time.

 After snack time, there was so much cleaning to do in our classroom and we did some activities with our teachers. We decorated our “tree” which we keep on the balcony throughout the year. It is a large branch with small branches attached to it and it has played many different roles over the years. It was been a “mother’s day” tree, a “kindness tree”, an “autumn/fall tree” and today it became a “Xmas/Channukah tree”. We made some small daisy chains and used them together with some tinsel, to decorate the branches. We add snowflakes, pine cones, spinning tops and candles to the tree. It sparkles in the classroom and makes it feel like our classroom is festive and representative of this time of year.

We made Christmas cards for our families at one of the tables too and decorated them using the same art materials that we used when we made the cards for our friends in Tohoku.

  All the children in Petals Class.