Marbling

“Hello everybody, it’s nice to see you

Hello dear…………………, it’s nice to see you”

These were the words of the song that John sang with us when he came to do music with our class. He will be coming every Wednesday to do music with us, which we are so happy about. We have teachers with many talents and it’s great for them to share these skills with the children in all the classes at Ohana.

We sing many songs in our classroom each day and music is such a fun way to learn. John said that he saw many of us with smiles when he came into the classroom which made him feel happy. He asked us to stand up so that we could learn a new song called “Smile”. The song had many actions and the theme that we tried to remember was to always smile. The word smile was repeated many times in the song. John said that when we smile it makes everyone around us feel happy and we feel happy too.

He taught us a song about being responsible which he made up. We think that he’s really good at making up songs. These are some of the words of the song about being responsible.

I’m growing up x 3 and I’m responsible

I’m growing up x 3 and I’m responsible

I clean up my toys

All by myself

I’m growing up and I’m responsible

I’m growing up and I’m responsible

I help my mum to wash the dishes

I help my mum to wash the dishes

I’m growing up and I’m responsible

I’m growing up and I’m responsible.

Some of us had a turn to sing the words of the chorus. At the end of the lesson he sang:

Goodbye x 3 my friends, it’s nice to see you again.

We will try to remember the songs for next week when he comes to do music with us again. Thanks John for a wonderful music lesson with you today!

We played a game using dice and 3D objects with cards early in the morning. Our teachers are focusing on small groups to help us develop our interests further in

certain areas. Those of us who are interested in letters and writing will have specific tasks to do at one table; those of us who are interested in numeracy will have tasks to do at another table etc. We had a small group of us who sat with Shelley and played games that included numerical concepts, classifying and categorizing, matching, using our sense of touch to find the correct objects, and taking turns. We spoke about the classification that each of us had on our cards e. g. Charlie had ‘things that go’; Mirai had ‘under the sea’; Riou had ‘on the farm’ and Yulia had ‘foods we eat’. The most challenging part of the game was feeling inside the basket and trying to find the objects that matched our cards.

 When we returned from the park, all hot and sweaty, Hisami read us a story while standing on a chair. We were lying on the carpet relaxing and cooling off so she stood on the chair, held the book up so that we could all see it, and read it to us. The story was called “When I feel good about myself”.  

We continued working on our large marble painting this morning. We used pieces of coloured tissue paper which were all crumpled up. We unfolded the paper and then pasted the pieces onto the marbled area. We enjoyed uncrumpling the paper and trying to make it flat. We learnt that this activity was good for our fine motor skills. Some of us wanted to make letters with the tissue paper, so Shelley helped us. We made a ‘S’ for Shelley, a ‘M’ for Meg, a ‘C’ for Charlie and a ‘L’ for Liezel. Meg told us that you make an ‘H’ with two long sticks and one short stick to go across the middle. The ‘H’ was for Hisami. ‘K’ is for Kai and he needed one long stick and two short sticks at certain angles. Can you spot the letters in our painting?

We are all signing in at the beginning of the day and remembering the extra things that we do each day when we come to school. We now have three tables for activities, snack and lunch times so when we are doing our jobs, we have a few extra things to do as well. We like being given responsibility and were happy that John created a song, all about being responsible.

Every day when we come to school, it is a new day. We are excited to see what new things we will see in our class when Pauline comes to teach us with Kai, Hisami and Liezel.

Love, All the children in the Flower’s class.