Frist Miyashita Monday this year!

January 15th, 2018

Dear Parents,

Happy Miyashita Monday everyone! We were so excited for our first Gym class this year. We began the class by wishing Miyashita sensei ‘Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu’. He was so happy to see us and we all hugged him tight. We did lots of different exercises today, with the main focus being moving freely and developing whole body movement through a variety of walking and running activities. We started by doing some warm up exercises followed by a workout in which we had to keep our balance, like one feet up and count to 10, table pose with whole body and airplane pose. Then we walked and ran around a green mat. After that we did 2 forward roll and jumped over the rope. We always like to end the class with a fun game. Today’s game was a ‘Thunder and Crow’ game. We jumped jumped and jumped and when Miyashita sensei said “karasu”, we had to cover our head, whereas when he called “kaminari” we had to cover our belly button. If we failed to do the correct action promptly, the crow (sensei) pecked at our head or stole our belly button. This game was new to us and we enjoyed playing it. Thank you, Miyashita sensei, for doing gymnastics with us again this year!

K got Mr. Spotty back today and shared his adventures with him. He was very proud as he said “fun”, when we asked him if he enjoyed his time with Spotty. K said that he fed Spotty “Shrimp onigiri” and he liked it. K also said that when he had to go out, he hugged Spotty tightly and said ‘Itekimas’.

We also had a go at writing our names today on the white board. We were reminded to hold our whiteboard markers with ‘baby shark fingers’ (tripod grip or pointer finger, thumb and middle finger together). Then we found our names from the table and placed them on our whiteboard. After that, we tried to copy the shape of the letters of our name. It was a really fun activity and we felt so proud of ourselves.

We continued working on our Shuji and Koma and hopefully by the end of the week, most of our friends would have had the chance to work on it. We would love to see our work displayed in the classroom when we are all done.

Some of us drew on the birthday cards and crowns for our friends whose birthday falls in January. We also joined tracks for our trains to go. Our main aim was to build the tracks, so the train can continue to move without obstacles and for that, we had to organize the tracks in a manner that increases the train’s ability to move smoothly. It was quiet a challenging task for us to do independently and some of us made a ‘s shape track’ or a ‘straight-line’ track. Then when our trains ran on the tracks, we realised that the trains couldn’t go on and on because it stopped abruptly. This is when our teachers pointed out that if we want our trains to keep going, we need to build the tracks in a shape that allows our train to do that. Our teachers love us to be curious and explore and even make mistakes in a safe environment because that’s how we learn and grow.

Love,

Little Gymnasts in Petals Class