What Makes Us Stand?

“Good morning everyone, the day has just begun

I love to see your smiling face

Good morning everyone.”

Today we sang this song while sitting in a large circle and we sang about different emotions and made faces to try to match the emotions. We made an angry face, a sad face, a surprised face, a sleepy face, a happy face and a thinking face. There are many more emotions that people feel and we will learn more about them over the coming weeks.

Another important discussion we had was about our “body”; our amazing working machine. We first sang a song about our body called “My Body makes Music” in English and then we sang it in Spanish. In Spanish it is “Mi Cuepo hasa musica”. It was fun because we clapped with our hands, stamped our feet, used our voices to go la la la and moved our hips and sang cha cha cha.

Shelley asked a question: If your body wants to sit down, what must it do?

Ra: We talk to our brain

Shelley: What do we tell our brain?

Ja: Feet (pointing to his feet) Feet will do message

Shelley: What must I do with my feet?

Ra: We have to bend our knees

Shelley: And what part of our body do we sit on?

Br: Bum

Shelley then stayed standing and flopped down with her head and upper body hanging down while her legs stayed standing. She asked us if we knew how our bodies were able to stand up

Mo: Bones

Shelley: (touching her bones and skin) If this is my skin and my bones are inside my skin, how can I stand up?

So: Brain say, go up

Mo: I can help the head

Ra: You move your arms\

Some of our friends were trying to move her arms up together with her body and head, but each time she flopped down again. When she stayed up for a short time, we thought that her bones and legs were keeping her up but she flopped down again and again.

Mo: It’s your blood and your muscles

Wi: You say, please help stand up

Shelley: Oh so my muscles are helping me stand up. Do you have muscles?

All: Yes

We stood up singing “Let’s all hold hands in a circle” which we realised we could do not only because of our brain sending messages to our body but because we had muscles. If we didn’t have muscles, we wouldn't be able to stand up even if our brain sent a message to our arms and bodies. We kicked our legs, walked on the spot, held hands with friends and turned around on the spot.

We always have so many things to discuss and we looked at the shape of a person which we traced last week, that is hanging in our classroom. All over the shape, there are words labeling different parts of the body. Shelley asked us another questions: What the only that you can see on this person? Can you see my muscles and bones?

Mo: because it’s covered with skin

Ra: Bones are muscles

Mo: Muscles is the muscles and bones is the bones.

Shelley: What part of my body is this? (pointing to the shape of a person with many labels)

Mo: Skin, Muscles, bones. You can’t see.

Ry: Bones

Shelley: This is the front of my body. Do I have any other aspects to my body?

Ed: You have a back (Eddie stood up and showed everyone the back of his body)

B: You have sides

Mo: Two sides

Shelley: Left and right side. So when we look at this picture of our friend hanging up in the classroom, we can only see the front. So how can we made the back of our body?

Mo: We can draw the back

Shelley: Who knows how we can draw the back.

Ani: I can. You lie down like this (she lay down on her stomach and we traced around her)

Shelley: How many fingers do we have?

Ant: Five

Mo: And nails.

Shelley: I wonder why we have nails? And why we need nails?

Mo: Because if we don’t have nails your can’t cut your nails.

Ra: We need nails to grow and we have to thrown them. Sometimes we throw them in the bin.

Shelley: Now that we have traced the back of An, what can we see on our back?

Ra: We can see hard things

Mo: That’s bones

And so you can see our conversations go on and on and on. We have more conversations about rain and the story that Vieda told us today. She told us a story about “Otsukimi” which has a connection to the Chinese Moon Festival. Do you remember Kai told us a story about the Chinese Moon Festival on Friday? Today it was about the Japanese Moon festival.

Vieda: Do you remember the story Kai told us on Friday?

Mo: The story was Chinese holiday

Vieda : (showing us some grass) What are these leaves?

An: Grass

Ja: I don’t’ know its name

Ed: Maybe Moon Festival grass

Li: That’s funny name “susuki”. The “su” shape is funny.

Mo: Because they have the same letter

Vi: What’s Otsuki?

Mo: Moon

Li: I know that kanji

Vieda: And what is “miru” in English?

Ry: See

Ra: It can be a half moon or circle moon

Mo: Yellow moon or blue moon

Ra: Sometimes it can be a shiny moon

Vieda: And what animal

Yu: Rabbit

Wil: When it was night, I saw people did taiko

Li: And “omochi”

Vieda: And what month are we in now?

Mo: September

In China they eat Moon Cake and in Japan, we eat “odango”. Odango is a circle shape. It is round like a ball.

Shelley told us earlier that she was happy that it was raining because we have so many things to learn and to work on; and today we can do everything without interruptions. Our day consisted of making birthday cards; drawing our entire body; drawing people or animals; and making “Otsukimi” pictures. We used paint and grass for the mochi, moon and “susuki” and our rabbit was origami. We also completed making our Moon Cake puzzles which we pasted directly into our Workbooks/Portfolios. What a busy day it was. We even managed to do some yoga and our favourite pose which is the tree pose. We did the upside down dog pose and mountain pose too. And after a number of bouts of deep breathing we lay down for our “do nothing pose”. Phew!

Our discussions take a lot of time and we are all so excited to hear what our friends are saying and find the answers for ourselves.

Thanks for a fabulous Monday; and fun walk to Nanzan Shogakko for our Evacutation Drill.

Love always,

All the Flowers Class children