Ohana Learning Tree....our work in progress

Our teachers never get tired of our endless conversations and thoughts that we share during discussions. We love thinking and talking whenever we have the opportunity to do so. And we feel challenged when we are presented with situations or discussions that make us think outside the box; and beyond our comfort zones and what we know in life.

Soon it will be International Months and we know that some of our parents have signed up already, to do a presentation on our home countries. We are really excited about International Months coming so soon, because we love to hear about the world, what people eat, how they use language, the music that is part of their culture etc. We are sure that most of our parents will sign up so that we can learn from them, and their experiences. So, talking about Chivy and Cambodia which is a country that most of us have not yet visited, is interesting for us’ and it connects us with a country that know very little about. Shelley told us a story using puppets about Chivy and Mali her friend and their desire to learn and how Chivy went from not having a school to having a Kindergarten classroom built for her and her friends.

I n our journal yesterday we spoke about the many things that we love in Flowers Class and how much we would love Chivy and her friends to have the same or similar toys to play with. Today our discussion centered around how we were going to make our “Ohana Learning Tree” tree in our classroom, dis-play all these things.

Shelley: Yesterday you told us so many different things that you wanted to put on the tree that you loved to do in Flowers Class; and that you wanted the children in Cambodia to have the same things that we have in Flowers Class. I’m not sure how we can make the things for the tree. Can you give me some ideas?

Ai: Leaves Shelley: How can you make leaves for the tree?

Ai: You can write the leaves and cut it out

Shelley: That’s a great idea

Emilie: Painting…...you can paint it and let it dry and then

January 15th, 2019

hang it up

Taisei: Trains…….you paint it and cut it out and draw it and cut it out and hang it up

Mia: We can draw a tree and we can cut it and we can put glue on it and hang it up

Natan: Cars ….I paint it and then I cut it out and then I can draw it too

Momo: I want to put some bells on the tree

Shelley: How can you make the bells Momo: We can draw it and cut it and glue it and stick it on the tree

Temma: You said you wanted to put Lego on the tree. What is your idea about putting Lego on the tree?

Io: We can use real Lego in the tree

Temma: We can put that Lego and hang it with tape on the tree

Shelley: Some of you said yesterday that you loved reading books. How can we put books on the tree?

Momo: We draw a book

Alona: We can take a picture of it and then we can put it on the tree

Kensei: Cutting ……….we can put paper and scissors

Shelley: Can we put a real scissors on the tree

Children: Noooooooooooo

Alona: We can take the paper and stick it

Temma: We can take a picture we are cutting the paper

Io: We can also put food. How can we put food on the tree

Ai: I don’t know too

Momo: We put glue then and stick it on the tree

Emilie: We can hang the food on the tree

Shelley: Where can we get pictures of food?

Emilie: We can draw it

Taisei: We can take pictures

Ethan: We can put a racing car on the tree

Children: And stars

Natan: And a heart

Shelley: We have a lot of things to do and make, so maybe we can plan to start all our preparations tomorrow. We can do it all in four groups. Maybe one group with Kai can take pictures with the camera, one group with Liezel can look for the real things that we want to hang on the tree, one group with Hisami can draw or paint the things that we want to put on the tree and one group can cut out things. The group that is taking photos can use the small camera and take photos of the things that you suggested today.

And so our story about Chivy continues and we add to it regularly each week. When the weather gets warmer, maybe we will have an opportunity to have a school under a tree, like Chivy did, before Ohana Learning Tree was built.

There were so many things to play with, make and create this morning. Our friends who were not at school yes-terday, did their self portraits this morning. Our teachers think that they really look like us. Perhaps we are all artists, which is what our teachers often tell us.

Hisami made a science and cooking experience all in one, for us today. We were all ready to be chefs until we learnt that what we were going to cook, was not for eating. If we were not going to eat it, what was it going to be? We think that you guessed it already! Yes, play dough. We used flour, food colouring, water, oil, cream of tartar and salt. We mixed and poured and stirred and put the bowl in the microwave and eventually we discovered that we had made play dough. We chose to make green play dough today so we used green food colouring. We had to wait for it to cool down as it was too hot when it came out of the oven. We left it to cool and then placed it in a Ziploc. Tomorrow we will play with it while we are working to prepare all the things for our Ohana Learning Tree.

Following on from our mixing colours experiment last week, we now have laminated sheets with our coloured cellophane inside them, in our specific designs. Kai asked us what the designs were that we made with the cellopohane and we started to tell him stories that we connected to the designs. Today we used Poscas and added drawings to the laminated designs. We will put our stories next to the laminated sheets so that everyone can under-stand what we did.

Today we went to Amishiro Koen and it was not busy so we had lots of place to play and we met some friends from another school, who usually play in Step Park. When we came back from the park, Kai read us a story called “Moostache”. W e are looking forward to all our preparations for tomorrow’s Ohana Learning Tree decorations. Thanks for a great day in Flowers Class.

OXOXOXO Flowers Class Children