Welcome to winter school!
December 17th, 2018
Welcome to our Winter School! We welcome new and old friends to Flowers class this week. Two friends were old Ohana members and they will join us this week. It was nice to see them again. One is new Ohana friend for winter school, and he was very happy to spend time with us even it was the very first day for him at Ohana.
Our circle time began with an interview time of our new friends. Risako stood up introduce herself and we asked some questions, too.
M: How old are you?
R: Five.
Next was R1’s turn.
I: How old are you?
R1: Five.
R2: Where do you go to school?
R1: Sacred Heart.
K: Do you have siblings?
R1: I have a little sister.
I: What is your sister’s name?
R1: K.
The last was R3’s turn.
R1: What is your name?
R3: Rio.
R1: What is your favorite food?
R3: …………(long thinking time)
T: What is your favorite toy?
R3: I don’t know.
T: How old are you?
R: Four.
We also introduced our names through singing our “Hello song”. We were glad to have three new faces in our winter school.
After Hello song, we talked about this weeks theme “Arctic Animals”. What are arctic animals? Where is the arctic? At the beginning, Hisami took some plastic animals on the carpet, a lion, a koala, a camel, an elephant, a polar bear and a reindeer.
Hisami: Where do the lions live?
M: Farm.
R2: Jungle.
S: Zoo.
A: In the very dark jungle.
W: I have lion in Norway.
Then we checked it in the book. It said that originally the lions were from Africa, so we placed the lion on Africa on our big world map.
Hisami: Where is Koala coming from?
E: Australia!
It was easy. She moved the koala on top of big island Australia.
Hisami: How about camel?
T: From Japan?
K: America.
We were not sure, so again the book helped us. According to the book, the camel is from North Asia. They live in many places these days, so it is hard to pick one place that they live.
Hisami: Where is the polar bear from?
Io: America.
E: The North Pole.
T: (points to the South Pole) Here because there are lots of snow.
It is right. They live in cold place with lots of snow. We checked on the book and we found the polar bear drawn on the arctic. The North Pole is all the way up North of our world map and the South Pole is the opposite side of the North Pole. We found one Arctic animal.
Hisami: Where is reindeer from?
N: From Japan.
E: The North Pole, too.
Yes, she was right. Reindeer also loves cold weather to live. Their home is the North Pole.
Hisami showed us some more Arctic animals. There were eight pictures a polar bear, an arctic wolf, a killer whale, a walrus, a snowy owl, a seal, a beluga and a reindeer. We thought about some questions what we want to know about them just like we asked some questions to our new friends today.
E: What do you eat?
I: How old are you?
T: How big are you?
T2: What food do you like?
R1: How do polar bear born baby?
A: Do whales have baby?
Then we decided to research these questions after gym class. But how can we look for these facts?
I: We watch computer.
E: We can watch from television.
M: We can watch ipad.
R1: We can watch laptop.
Kai: When people didn’t have any computer, how did they research?
All: …….
R1: Books.
Well, nowadays, we can use many tools to get information. Luckily, our school has many books and computers to use internet. We will use our modern technology to get information today.
Monday is Miyashita sensei gym day! It was raining outside, so it was just perfect to use our plenty of energy inside. We followed our normal warm up exercise and we practiced front roll on the mat. Because it was the last gym class in 2018, he suggested we could play three games today. We were very excited because we loved playing the games at the end of the lesson. The first game was, “ wan, niya, boo” game. Three friends are in one group with holding hands, “wan” is a dog, “niya” is a cat and “boo” is a pig. Three animals need to be together. When Miyashita sensei said, “wan”, wan friends need to move to find another group. When he said, “Nyaa and boo”. Nyaa and boo friends need to move. It was very complicated for us to figure out what we were and how it worked, but we still had lots of fun. It took us a long time to get into the game so we were only able to play one game today but he promised after the new year we will play two games.
W brought his own book and some soft toys. He showed what he brought and he explained why he brought them to school. It was one book about polar bear and his friends, and soft toys of a blue whale and a snowman.
Kai: Why did you bring those?
W: Because we are talking about cold, cold week.
He is from Norway all the way up north, very close to the Arctic circle. His book was written in Norwegian, so unfortunately we couldn’t read it. But we just made up the story from the pictures. It was fun to guess what it said, and we guessed many friends all over the world sent a letter to the polar bear. Thank you for sharing your story and toys.
Our research time was going on with two teams. One team was asking our Google about Arctic Wolf. Other team was using our books and computer to know about the reindeer. We found out the reindeer likes to eat sweet treats. We were not sure what it meant, but we guess they might have some treat from Santa Clause. Arctic wolf lives only about 6 to 8 years and they are born blind and deaf. It was interesting to know some new facts. We will share our research tomorrow.
Thank you for the lovely Monday and see you tomorrow!
XOXOXO,
Flowers Class Children