Where is your memory?

S o you may be asking, “What was different in Flowers Class, this morn-ing?” and we will answer you, “A lot was different in Flowers Class, this morning!” And you may say: “Why were lots of things different in your class today?” And we will answer, “A lot of things were different be-cause Kiki was in Flowers Class this morning.” This week is “teacher swapping week” again we will have Kiki for today and tomorrow while Kai is in Buds Class. We were so happy to welcome her to our class and she slotted in, as if she had been one of our teachers for a months. We hope that you enjoyed your time with us today, as much as we enjoyed our time with you!
Some other things that were different to-day were, the things that we had as provo-cations on two of our tables. On one of the tables was an empty white basket, an emp-ty plastic container with a lid and one con-tainer filled with small wooden twigs and another one, filled with circular wooden shapes. On the second table, there were metal bits including nails, screws, and many other parts, together with wooden shapes with holes in them. Kiki sat with us at this table and we made her into a robot. We used the metal and wooden parts to con-trol her; how she moved etc. We also tried to make things with the shapes and screw them together. Miles enjoyed playing with the wooden shapes and turned them into candy, which he offered us. Shelley was his assistant and they both said: “Would you like some candy?” Miles added different things to the wooden shapes which he found on the shelf under-neath our International Months documenta-tion. Our teachers put some collage materi-als there without the lids. The lids were next to the containers. Miles chose some-thing different each time. He chose the colourful square mosaics first; then the coloured matchsticks and in between he gave some people scarves which were small pieces of fabric.
While this was happening, some of us start-ed to draw on the large piece of blue paper which we originally worked on, ten
days ago. We used coloured pen-cils and markers. Hisami started drawing too and then Shelley joined in. We also used the dot markers to add bright colours to the art work. Some of us wanted to write words and names so we did. We wrote our teachers’ names and some other words.
Our morning circle time went on for a long time because we were so motivated by a memory game that Shelley introduced us to. Ri-ou knew how to play it because she played it during Phonics class yesterday af-ternoon. We used cards with pictures of food on them. In the lead up to the game we spoke about where your memory is; that it is in your brain. We thought about how our brain looks? How does our brain feel? How is it protected from injury? We knew that it was enclosed in our head bone which is called a “skull”. We know that a skull is part of a skeleton and couldn’t fully relate a skull to the bone, that protects our brain. Griffin said: Our brain is like curly. It looks like a worm Junto: It looks like poo Shelley: I wonder how it feels. Griffin: Slimy and squishy Junto: Inside our brain is a computer griffin: We have skin and bones covering our brain. Skin is soft and bones are hard. Then we focused on the pictures on the cards which were all of different kinds of foods. Shelley: If I want to go and get some food, where can I go? We had a huge selection of plac-es to get food, which we told our teachers. This was our list: Cost-co, 7 Eleven, Seijo Ishi, Don Quixote, Family Mart. In order for us to have one word to de-scribe where we get food from, we used the word, supermarket.
This was the sentence we said when it was our turn: “I went to the supermarket and bought…………….” The memory part of this game was that We had to try to remember what food the person, before us, had bought in the supermarket. We couldn't see all of the pic-tures on the cards because each time someone put their card down, they covered the card from before. Shelley started off: “I went to the supermarket and bought a hot dog”. Grif-fin went next: “I went to the supermarket and bought a hot dog and an egg.” Then it was Junto’s turn and he couldn’t see the hot dog picture because the one with the egg was cov-ering it. Junto said: “I went to the supermar-ket and bought a hot dog, an egg and choco-late.” We went on and on until we had used 15 cards. The more cards we used, the trickier it became, because we had to mem-orise more pictures. Those of us who had a turn in the beginning had a much easier time than those who went later. It was so much fun. We sang: “Ooh la la la, ooh, la la la, ooh la la la, show me, show me, show me your memory”. We changed the words of one of the songs that John taught us about “gentle hands”.
We had a wonderful time in the park, spe-cially because it was warm outside. We played without our jackets and felt lighter and freer. When we came back to school, Hisami read a Japanese book that only had one word on each page. The illustrations were pretty explanatory and the sound of the words was musical. The book is called “Moko moko”. We tried to use parts of our bodies to explain the sounds. When there are only a few words in story books, it makes us use our imagination more.
Thanks for a fabulous day. We are preparing for our journey to the USA tomor-row.
Love from all the Flowers Class children.