Christmas is coming and the sun is shining
November 27th, 2018
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away”.
Ava was the weather reporter today and she told us that it was sunny outside. This made us feel really happy, because it meant that we could go to the park without our jackets. In fact, we did wear our jackets to the park and as soon as we arrived there, we took them off. It was such a beautiful day with lovely temperatures that didn’t feel at all like winter. We usually do our weather report when we change the calendar. This week is the last week of November so we will soon have to change the month to December, which is the last month of the calendar year 2018.
Our art experiences today involved our last two friends working on their wreaths for Christmas gifts; the rest of us making Christmas cards which will go with our presents; and the last thing was using the fall/autumn leaves that we collected in the park and along the road and trying to make creative, interesting art works with them.
For the fall/autumn leaves art project, we chose animals as the theme and looked at a book all about animals to inspire and guide us. Our teachers sometimes prefer us to use our imaginations rather than look at real life pictures. We have some wonderful ideas of our own, however today, we were happy to look at pictures. Emilie made two butterflies and Grace also made butterflies. Grace used Poscas to make the leaves colourful. Temma made an ant that was eating honey and strawberry juice. Yummmmmm! We will use the leaves tomorrow and let more of our friends make animal shapes with them.
Yesterday we chose a specific shape for our Christmas cards and today we decorated them. We used Christmas tape, sequins, bells, pom poms and cotton wool to decorate the cards. They look sooooooo beautiful. When Shelley came back and saw the work that we had put into decorating them, she was amazed. One of the cards was a present in the shape of a box, with a ribbon on top of it. It has some other decorations using small coloured square mosaics all put together in lines, just like it was a real present. The one Christmas tree card has lines of Christmas tape on it, showing the shape of the tree. Some of us used a bell on our cards because jingling bells are such a big part of this time of the year. We love singing “Jingle Bells” which is one of the songs that we are singing for our Winter Holiday party.
Our discussion today evolved from listening to a story about Cambodia. Kai read us the story that Pauline had written about Cambodia; motivated by Ohana International School, having built “Ohana Learning Tree” in Cambodia. Our teachers want to help us try to truly understand what the life of a child is like in Cambodia and how they are not all afforded the inevitability of schooling and education, like we are. It tells the story of a girl named Chivy who lived with her mommy and daddy in the countryside and how she longed to learn to read the words that her mommy read to her in stories. The only way that she could do this, was by going to school. How was she going to find a school? Was there a school nearby. We will share the full story one day with everyone and make our own book of the story too. This was some of the conversation that evolved:
Kai: Why was Chivy sad?
Grace: Mommy won’t let her go to school. (The school was in the next town, far away.)
In the story Chivy’s friend invited her to go to school under a tree. They went to school outside even when it’s raining.
Kai: do you think their school will be wet or dry in the rain?
Grace: Dry
Taisei: Wet
Kai: Do you like to be wet or dry when you’re at school?
(Some of the children shouted “wet!” and some shouted “dry!”
After the story the Kai asked us what we thought of the story but we only had more questions.
Grace: Why did they have a tree school?
Kai: Because they don’t have a lot of money for a school and the other school is so far away. They don’t even have computers, cell phones or toys.
Sarah: They only have a tree for school.
Emilie: Why do they fly to the country in the story?
At the end of the story the Ohana friends went to Cambodia to visit the school that they have created and to see the pen pals whom they’ve been talking to.
Momo: I like the Cambodia school because, I like the Cambodia friends.
We went on comparing on what we had at Ohana and what they had I or didn’t have at the Tree School. It seems like that we have a lot of books, heater when it’s cold, a/c when it’s hot and all the technology that we have everyday in our lives.
Kai: Do you like the Tree School?
Taisei: No, Because when it’s raining everyone get’s wet.
Kai: Why do you think we are helping them?
Grace: Because they don’t have a school.
When we were in the park, Kai tried to teach some of us how to throw a base ball but you know how much we love soccer, we just wanted to kick the ball, even though it was small. When we came back to school we told Shelley how sweaty we were and she could see from our hair, because it looked a little wet!
We just looooooove the Channukah song. We love the tune, the repetition and the actions. Many of us sang “loud and proud” today and the domino effect was that almost all of us sang in this way, because we were motivated and inspired by our class mates and their singing. The number one “loud and proud” today was Mia! Well done Mia! We think that maybe tomorrow we will all sing “loud and proud”. This is our new catch phrase. Our teachers would like us to feel proud of everything that we do and achieve in our lives; and to value who we are, as people. Since there are so many children in our class, we sang the Channukah song twice. The first time Grace was the Shamash and the second time, Emilie was the Shamash. On the way to and from the park, we always sing songs and sang some of the ones that we will sing for the show, in two weeks time.
There is so much happening in our classroom every day. Our teachers are constantly planning and preparing things for us to learn about and from next term we will commence Show and Tell. Our teachers will send an email to all of our families so that they can diary the date when it is each of our turn to do Show and Tell. We are going to talk about it in the classroom so that we understand clearly what we can bring for Show and Tell.
Thanks for a great day and see you tomorrow
Love always,
Flowers Children