Monday Miyashita-sensei
Good day everyone! What a wet Monday! Hope that everyone is staying dry from this rainy weather. Of course, our time in Buds class is still fun because we had a lot of amazing activities in the classroom. For example, we had some sensory toys that we could use our hands for stacking and arranging them whichever we wanted. The other table had some matching tiles and it was really fascinating to see how our friends were able to categorize and found the same pictures for each tile. For some, it was a little tricky because some drawings had lots of complex colors but in the end, we were able to complete the whole set. The third table was occupied by a light table with some Lego blocks and light letters. We got so creative and made tall blocks with our own imagination. Our teachers were there and watching us play together. Some of our friends knew about the letters and some of them even spelled their own names. It was very impressive to see how we are learning our names naturally through play. Our teachers were so patient to guide us with this task and sometimes, they asked us questions that could help us think more about what we felt during our play time. The carpet was busy too because there was the ark with some animal toys inside. We learned how to share our toys together.
After our free-play time, we gathered in a circle and did a roll-call. All of us were so good at responding, “Here” and “Not here”. We looked around and saw who really was here and who wasn’t. Then, we sang our good morning song and we started to realize that we haven’t counted our friends yet. So, one of our friends counted everyone and another counted our teachers. Wow! We are really getting the hang of it now. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! Before Miyashita-sensei came to our classroom, we played several movement games with our teachers. First, we made a big circle, held our hands and listened to the music. Our teacher said that we needed to listen and move around when the music was playing. When the music stopped, we all had to sit down as fast as we could. We did quite well with this activity and we’re able to follow instructions nicely. The next activity was to listen to the music again howver, it changed for several times. It went fast, slow, big and soft. And each sound symbolized a particular movement. For example, the fast music was running like a cheetah, the slow one is tip-toeing like a giraffe and so on. After our short game, Miyashita-sensei came and greeted us with a big smile—as he always does.
Okay! We’re ready for gym class and Miyashita-sensei instructed us to do our warm-up exercises. We moved around again like little animals and it’s always so much fun doing this with him. After our warm-up, Miyashita-sensei put the big green mat in the middle of the room and he told us to perform the forward roll individually. It was quite challenging for some but for our active friends, it was like a walk in the park. After several attempts, we finished our gym class by playing the chasing game. Thank you so much, Miyashita-sensei for another beautiful day!
Since that we couldn’t go outside for park, we decided to have our extended free play time, we talked about the animal sounds. Our teachers let us hear the different sounds from our speaker and we tried to guess which animals we’ve heard. After that, we had a singing session. We sang “Old McDonald” and “Animals on the bus”. We were so fantastic in recognizing them. Lastly, we played the “Find the missing pig” game. This game was all about looking for the toy pig inside our classroom. Our teachers asked us to close our eyes and we waited until they have hidden the pig. When it was time to look for it, we have found the pig in several places such as the box, on the table, on the chair and even inside the boot. It was funny but at the same time we realized that we could find these things easily. Before eating lunch, we read a book called “I went walking…” by Sue Williams and Julie Vivas. We didn’t just read the book but there was also music involved. Hence, we sang the whole book together. Thank you so much for a fun day, Ohana. See you all again tomorrow. Please stay dry as much as you can.
Lots of love,
All the animal lovers from Buds class