Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie.......oy,oy,oy!
March 6th, 2019
“Weather wise”, some people would say that today is a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” but for us, it was a wonderful day. We had many things to prepare in the classroom and to complete our art projects and our teachers are observing our free play and documenting what we do, through pho-tos and our conversations.
Free play is a time for us to choose things from the storage closet and play with them in our own unique way. Our teachers sometimes join in with our conversations, however sometimes, they just observe us and take notes while we are playing.
At the tables, we continued working on our Australian still life pictures and we are adding them to our workbooks/portfolios. Kai is also encouraging us to think about perspective when we are drawing and the size of each object that is in the still life composition. Since we did dot painting today, we noticed that there is dot painting on the rain stick.
Shelley told us that in all countries there are the people who were there, long ago who built their own houses out of sand and water, which they made into mud; they grew their own food and hunted for animals. We were concerned about where they slept so Shelley asked us: What do you think they used for their beds?
Natan: Rocks
Taisei: Wood
Temma: Paper
Alona: Sticks
Ai: Branches
Shelley: And what do you think they used for blankets?
Emilie: The wool from the sheep
She also told us that these people were called Aboriginals in Australia and they used plants as medicine. The Aboriginal people in Australia made dot painting famous in the early 1970’s. Here is a link for you to read about how dot painting emerged in Aboriginal art.
https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/arts/
We used cotton buds to make our dot paintings. Our dot painting art was a group art project, since we used the same paper that we did our Australian animal stamping on. We made some shapes and we made random dots all over the paper, using purple, blue, green, orange, red, green and white.
We completed making a gift for Maki, since she is leaving Flowers Class at the end of March, so that she can prepare for when her baby arrives in May. We will miss her very much and hope that she will come back to Ohana International School one day, to teach again. We used pictures of our faces and made a place mat for her to use when she has her meals at home. This way, she will not be able to forget us. We are really happy because she will join us at our Spring Picnic and we can do a special farewell for her then. We are waiting patiently for spring to appear and are excited that when we return from spring break, we will have our Spring picnic, with the whole school.
We played our matching game with the Australian animals, their paws and their footprints. Some of us remembered which pictures go with which and some of us worked it out again. It’s a fun way to try to find out whose foot is whose. It reminded us when we had our feet all over the classroom, and we tried to guess whose foot was whose. Our feet were not easy to distinguish from one another.
We read a story called “Edward the Emu” about an emu that wasn’t satisfied with who he was. He thought that being a seal was better; then he thought that being a li-on was even better; then he thought that perhaps a snake was the best…………..and finally, when he heard someone saying that the emu was the best thing to see in the zoo, he returned to the Emu’s section in the zoo only to find………………..another emu in his
place………….oh dear! Now he had company so this made everything a whole lot better. We think that it is important to accept and love who you are, because you can’t change yourself! Loving yourself is so important.
Another concept that we learned about today was pairs. When Shelley asked us to place our pair of shoes on the carpet before we went to the park, she asked us if we knew other pairs on our bodies. What pairs do we have on our bodies? We noticed a pair of eyes, a pair of eyebrows, a pair of feet, a pair of legs, a pair of knees, a pair of nostrils, a pair of ears, and a pair of lips. She then touched her face and asked us: What are these? And we said: Cheeks.
Shelley: Do you know that we have another pair of cheeks?
All of us said: No. And she turned around and touched her bottom and said that these are also called cheeks. Of course we laughed and we didn’t believe her; but she convinced us. She said: One pair of cheeks is on your face and we sit on another pair of cheeks!
We loved our day in Flowers class
XOXOXOXOX Flowers Class children