Save our ocean

Summer came again?

As soon as we went inside our classroom, we saw lots of fish swimming on our wall. We felt like we were underwater! We pretended like we were fish...swim...swim...swim. Kiki and the children talked about all the different fish we could see...seahorse, “nimo” fish aka clown fish, puffer fish, turtle, eel, rainbow fish, etc. They seemed very happy living there because it’s a very nice and clean ocean.

At the table, we saw “a smaller ocean.” There was a transparent container with blue water, some fish and other creatures. We made them swim and move into the small ocean. J said, “Look splash!” He pretended the shark was jumping out. At the other side, B was playing with the magnetic blocks and being very imaginative. He had three blocks, a green and two blue blocks. He put the green one between the blue blocks and said, “Look, fish is in the water” He also pointed at another block and said, “This is a baby butterfly fish and mama butterfly fish. They are swimming”

Most of us are still enjoy watching the ocean video….but wait a minute…The clean ocean became something different. We noticed that there are some trash in the ocean. Our teachers asked, “What do you see? What’s THAT?” R said, “Garbage!” R also said, “Garbage! Dirty, dirty, dirty! Its so yucky” B was wondering, “Maybe fish like garbage?” S said, “No thank you!” R said, “Sick!” and pointed fish out. E said, “Oh no! Water bottle finish!” We couldn't stop discussing it. But, its time to clean up, so we decided to talk about it again for circle time.
Thursday is a dancing day with ballerina Maryna.  We had a wonderful time with her. We did various movements. We jumped, hopped, turned like animals and we practiced how to keep our balance with songs. Thank you very much Maryna and see you next week!

 
After circle time, we came back talking about our ocean.  We did a quick morning song and reviewed about what we watched this morning. Sayaka brought out the small ocean, what we had played with. But wait, she started putting trash in it...the color became dark and we couldn't see fish anymore…

Sayaka asked Kiki, if she has seen the ocean like this before.

Kiki: When I go out of the beach, it’s not beautiful anymore. Look, there’s gomi. on the beach (she showed her picture from her summer vacation).
A: I saw one sand bottle on the beach. 1 PET bottle. And there was sand in it. Maybe it is in the water, then the water brings it out on the beach.
Kiki: Who’s putting garbage in the water? Why is the garbage in the water?
B: But the garbage cans are in the building!
Sayaka: So why is there garbage in the beach?
C: Someone throwing in the ocean (in Japanese)

Children were very confused. Then Kiki asked...
Kiki: What happened to the water that Sayaka put garbage in?
D: It’s dark!
Kiki: What should have Sayaka done?
E: bring home and you put in garbage.
Kiki: what color is the ocean now?
F: Yucky blue!

After that Sayaka showed the short video about birds and fish eating plastic. It made us feel so sad and rethink about plastic, trash, and saving our ocean. In the video, they passed away after eating lots of plastics…. We are very sad and had a long discussion.

After we had a long discussion to save clean ocean, we helped our teacher to wash toy fish.! Now we know what we can do for our ocean and would like to share our ideas with our families!

Thank you very much for wonderful day! See you all tomorrow.

Love,

All the cheerful children in Petals Class