What guidelines did we create in our class this year?
Every day in Flowers Class is a big surprise and today was no different. We started off our day with free play and had a longer time to engage in free play with our friends and teachers because it was raining and we knew that we wouldn’t get a chance to go to the park. It actually rained on and off throughout the morning and then we noticed that the wind became stronger. We told our teachers, when we changed the calendar, that we could just keep the rainy word and picture from yesterday. Later in the day, we needed to add the windy word and picture too. The weather forecast said that there is a big storm coming to Japan today and that Tokyo will get some big rains and wind. Usually, we are lucky in Tokyo and the big storms go past us or we experience the end of them. We hope that the people in other parts of Japan are safe.
Following on from free play, we all sat together and created our GUIDELINES board. We used the purple felt board and attached the words that we selected for our rules/guidelines, which Shelley created for us, together with the photos that we selected on the computer yesterday. They were laminated so that they can last for the whole year. Shelley asked us if we remembered the rules/guidelines that we had created and each time, she put the words up and we found the corresponding photo. We looked carefully at the photos so that they would match with the words. When she asked us what the rules/guidelines were, we created new ones. She said: “I think that we are going to add to our rules/guidelines throughout the year”. If you want to read the rules/guidelines, please come inside the classroom so that you can read them.
During free play time, we noticed that there were two trays on two tables. Last year our teachers tried to teach Flowers Class children to think independently and not to rely on instruction from them, all the time. They used to put things on the table for the children to use in their own creative ways. So they are doing the same with us, this year. We didn’t pay much attention to the paper in the trays until Shelley said: “I wonder what’s inside these and what we can do with them?” So many of us suddenly became interested and we came to one of the tables to cut and at the other one, we cut out pictures and we pasted shapes on cards with drawings. Many of us showed great skills when cutting and we enjoyed sitting quietly and concentrating on tasks of our choice.
After snack time, we revisited our sensory experience from yesterday and looked at the trays that we left out yesterday. We noticed that there was a lot of water in the trays and the one with the leaves, had orange coloured water; the one with the sticks had green water and the one with sand, had brownish water. The water that melted with beads inside it, was the same colour. In fact, it doesn't have any colour. You can see through water just like you can see through a window. We have once again documented our conversations with photos which we will have in our workbook/portfolios. We will add some photos here for you to see.
As you can see from the photos here, we did yoga today. We had a lovely introduction to yoga from our specialist yoga instructor, Hisami. She told us that yoga is very good for our body, mind and spirit. She said that part of yoga practice is also meditation. Momo knew the word meditation and said that he knew what meditation was. His mum and dad are yoga ambassadors and they too probably incorporate meditation in their practice. They, in fact, help people in hospitals by doing yoga with them. We think that this is amazing. Helping people is such an important part of life and community.
We did a tree pose; a peacock pose; a mountain pose; a butterfly pose and the hero pose. We did some breathing exercises to help make our bodies still and strong. Hisami lit a candle to help us focus and she told us to look at the candle and keep our eyes on the candle all the time. She told us that it was a good time to just look and stay silent.
We loved our yoga lesson which we had just before lunch time. We would like to share with you what we did before yoga which was so energetic and of course we had much louder voices. We played the “Laser Game”. Some of us remembered playing this game during summer school and we loved it. Kai made a long stick and he held one end and Liezel held the other end. They held the stick low on the ground and we worked out that we needed to jump over it. Then they held it high and we worked out that we needed to go under it. We did it many times and tried our best to follow the rules/guidelines which Kai explained to us. The most important one was that we needed to stay on the carpet and if we went off the carpet, we were walking in “lava” so we had to sit out of the game. The other important rule/guideline was that if the “Laser Pole” touched us, we also had to sit out of the game.
We are learning how to be responsible and fill our roles that we choose each day. We are trying to remember which jobs we choose each day and if we forget, some of our friends read our names, to remind us.
What a fun day it was. We wonder what surprise we will have tomorrow! Hmmmmmm?
Take care this afternoon and stay indoors in case there are big rains!
OXOXOX Flowers Class children
