Cherry Blossom Snowflakes
Tuesday 9th April, 2019
Some of us decided that we didn’t want to go to the park which was a great idea, especially since Kensei arrived at school much later than usual. When he came to school, those friends were playing in the classroom, so he had company. The rest of us were in the park, enjoying the sunny weather after a rainy day yesterday. Those of us who stayed at school told our teachers that we wanted to stay, and of course, our teachers accept most of our requests and said that it was fine to stay inside. Shelley started to write the journal while we played. She listened to the very interesting conversations that we had with one another. We told many stories to our friends; some of which were scary and some were happy. Our stories contained the theme of death quite a bit; having no parents and living alone; being eaten by a wolf or killing a wolf; being saved by someone and living happily ever after. Shelley was curious while we told our stories to one another and won-dered where our thoughts originated from. We are extremely productive each day and when we played in our small group, we played considerately and caringly. These are the values that we discussed in our morning circle time. Sometimes values are challenging to understand for us, however today, we were able to really get the gist of what our teachers were saying.
VALUES
We spoke about “Caring and Consideration” this morning, after we had held hands in a circle and done some fun actions. The actions that we did today were marching with our arms swinging at our sides, kicking our legs, swaying, shrugging our shoulders, putting our tongue inside one cheek and the inside the other, balancing on one leg and then the other etc. Once we had completed all of our actions, we sat down together and Shelley brought up the sub-ject of our “Kindness Tree”. She asked us:
Shelley: What was this tree before it became the Kindness Tree?
Natan: Halloween Tree
Shelley: I think that we only created it after Halloween.
Natan: Maybe a holiday tree
Alona: Cambodia Tree
Emilie: Christmas Tree
Shelley: Well, we are going to continue adding to it and also think about our two new values which are “Caring and Consideration”. I wonder how we can care for one another?
Alona: You can rescue them
Shelley: What happened to them, that we need to rescue them?
Alona: That they can be alive
Shelley: I wonder where they can be alive?
Taisei: If they are sad, we hug
Emilie: If they fall over, then we pick them up
Natan: When there is a fire, we call firefighter
Shelley: This is another idea to help you understand caring and consideration. When the moms come to school, we encourage them to park near the front and consider the other mums, who will need space to park.
Then Shelley demonstrated what happens when you are not considerate or do not consider people or things. She stood up and put a book on the floor. She asked us:
Shelley: What happens if I want to take a step backwards? Must I look behind me? If I don’t
look behind me, what can happen?
Sarah: If you step on the book, it will break
Orion: If you stomp on the book, you need to fix it
Taisei: If somebody step on it, we tell the teacher
Shelley: Do you need to tell your teachers? Can you say something to your friend?
Ai: Say, be careful!
Antoine: If you step on the fire, you can call the policeman
Temma: If you step on it, you can say, be careful and you can fix it
Natan: If you’re around the fire, you can call the fire and the policeman
Ethan: When there is a fire………….
Kai: You can also learn how to consider your friends’ feelings. If they say “NO” to you, you can
respect them and not do it again
Natan: If nobody is playing with your friend, you can play with him
You can see how our conversations take many turns, especially when something says a word, that prickles our interest and attention. Sometimes, we lose the gist of the conversation, as we navigate through the iscussion. Our teachers try to help us focus on what we are talking about and they also listen to our thoughts and comments.
ACTIVITIES
Our activities today involved a lot of thinking and drawing and creating. Some of us sat with Hisami and Shelley to make our Mothers Day cards. Do you know when our Mothers Day Breakfast is? Please diarise MONDAY, 13TH MAY at 8.30AM. This is our special celebration with our mums. Some of us are writing words using invented spelling because we know many of the letter sounds. Our teachers first asked us to chose a card and then they asked us to decide what we wanted to write inside the card. We selected the things that we want to say to our mums and looking at the alphabet chart, we worked out what letters to us, for each word. Once we had completed writing the words, we drew a picture, and decorated the inside of the cards with colourful, beautiful tape. If some of us are not sure how to write words, we have plenty of friends who are willing to help.
Kai sat with us while we made the gift for our mums. We have plans that we are using to copy onto the gift that we are making. We drew the plans and are using them as a reference. We have some photos but we don’t want to show too much, because we want to keep it a secret. It is made from colourful felt…...that’s all we can say. We will continue working on these gifts and the cards for a long time, because our teachers can only work with a few children at a time.
Liezel sat with us at the play dough table which was on one half of the table, and on the other half was a wonderful sorting and sensory tray. It has many compartments filled with fabulous materials. We have tweezers to try to pick the materials up and we use colourful cups to put them into. When it was time to pack away, it took a long time to place the materials in their specific places.
FREE PLAY
We welcomed Sota for a trial day today and we tried to help him because he only speaks Japanese. We think that he had a lovely time with us today, even though he was quiet. He really enjoyed playing soccer in the green area in the park. On the mat we had Kapla blocks to play with and the other thing that we are particularly interested in, is reading books. We can spend a long time reading by ourselves or with our friends. Today was one of those reading days, during Free Play time. Most of us were working at the tables during Free Play, so a small group of friends built constructions and played imaginative games with the Kapla blocks. We like our teachers to take photos of our constructions and show pride in what we have created.
STORY
Our story today was called “Try a little kindness”. It was the same story that Kai read to a few of us yesterday. We looked in detail at the illustrations in the book and tried to learn from them. The whole book was about kindness, caring and consideration which are the values that we are focusing on right now.
TEACH ME NOW
This is our new project for this term. Our teachers are going to send a schedule today with the journal. “Teach Me Now” is a special time for us to bring something to school that we can teach our friends how to do, how to make, how to use etc. Those of us who were in Flowers Class last year and continued into this year, loved “Teach Me Now”.
Thanks for a sunny, funny day at school.
XOXOXOXO Flowers Class children