Hands and Fingers

Hope everybody had a restful weekend. Actually, it’s also Japanese Holiday and we’re celebrating (keirounohi)敬老の日 which means Respect Day for the elderly. Probably, our dads and moms are having their quality time together and of course, we were ready to have a great day in the classroom too.

After doing our tasks in the classroom, we’re so thrilled to try out the various activities prepared for us. Today, we got the special fall art activity where we painted the whole canvas with various colors such as red, yellow and white. Next, we scribbled brown paint all over it using our forks. We used yarns to create wonderful patterns on our painting. We had extra leaves and twigs that we got from the garden and used it as a medium for drawing as well. At first, we were wondering why we had these leaves and twigs but later on, we figured that they can also be used as tool for creating art. We dipped each material on the tray and spread all over the canvas. Our little friends were a bit hesitant on how to approach the art project but later realized that it was really a matter of sensory experience using our fingers and hands to explore what we could do with the art materials. In the end, we had so much fun and we truly enjoyed working together to make a new art work in Buds. We’re so excited how this art would look like.

Since it’s a Japanese holiday, Miyashita-sensei didn’t come for our gym class. But our teachers were always ready to do something new with us. Today, we’ve discovered how we use our hands and fingers in different ways. We did some little finger exercises and tactile exploration. We imitated what our teachers do in the process and we really liked making different figures and shapes with them. We also counted our fingers and wiggled them as much as we could and then we sang our “Family finger” song. Practicing and moving them is also a good way to develop our fine motor skills and we surely showed off our teachers our ability in doing it. It was quite fun to see how some of our younger tots were trying to figure out which one was our thumb and which one was our index finger. It takes a little bit of practice on moving them more independently because it really requires good concentration and hand-eye coordination. We also did the Johnny oopss activity wherein we used our index finger from one hand to trace the other hand. While doing so, as we ran our index finger, it went up and down so when it goes up we say, “Johnny, Johnny” and when it goes down, we say, “ooppss”.

We also learned a new song called, “Gentle Hands”. This song also taught us how to use our gentle hands when we play with our friends and clean up the toys. Then, John walked around the circle and showed us how to use our gentle hands. We are looking forward to sing more songs with our friends and teachers.

Finally, after our snack time, we geared up for our park time. We walked slowly but surely and it was such a milestone for all of us because we all held on our rope with little assistance from our teachers now. When we arrived at the park, our friends got so excited to walk up and down the slide. We also explored the jungle gym and the swings. Some of our friends looked around the park and they told our teachers that we saw some ants crawling in and out of the ant colony. They said that they saw two or three ants. Our park is always a place where we can discover and learn new things each day. After park, we all went back to school and looked at Raffy’s life book too. Each time we receive a new life book, our little friends are always ready to look at it and point at the pictures. We absolutely love our day so great job everyone! Thank you so much Ohana for another fantastic learning moments!

Lots of love,

Buds Class Children