Brains

September 3rd, 2019                          Our Body is  a working machine

Our main discussion today, among all the periphery discussions that we have throughout the day focused on our brain. Shelley put on the apron with all the organs displayed in black and white on it, however we ignored the actual organs and the brain sending messages to our bodies was the topic of discussion.

Shelley: How does my body know to stand up?

Mo: My brain tells me to stand up.

Em: Here in my head is my brain. Feet (in reply to the question)

Mo: Your brain will tell you to sit down.

Shelley: What other messages will my brain send to my body?

Mo: I love you

Ja: Feet. If you want to sit down, you have to talk to your feet.

Shelley: So the brain can send messages to our body. Is this correct?

All: Yes.

Shelley to Antoine: Stand up and walk to me.

After An did this, Shelley said: So An can hear what I am saying, but what happens if his ears don’t work and he can’t hear any of us talking?

Mo: You use magic

Shelley: How can we use magic?

Wi: You can do it with your hands. I heard a song like that.

Shelley: So who would like to send a message to Wi’s brain without talking to ask him to do something?

Br: Me

So Br pointed for Wi to stand up and Mo signed with his hand for Wi to walk to him. Ra then pointed back to where Wi was sitting, and gestured for him to return to his spot.

Shelley: So we don’t always need words to send a message to our brain. What happens if someone cannot see?

Em: You can touch it

Mo: If we can’t see, we can walk even if our eyes are closed.

 Mag: You can use a walking stick.

Ed then received an instruction to walk to Liezel and pat her on the back

Eddie: What’s pat on the back

Shelley then demonstrated what “pat on the back” is.

Mo: Brain draws thing like on a paper and put it on the part

B: If you don’t know how to do something, you can ask your brain.

Ke: Even with eyes closed, you can do

Ed: Brain thinks

Ma: Your brain sends messages to your mouth to talk.

Shelley: What is this? (pointing to the skin on her arm)

Ja: Arm

Shelley: What am I touching that is soft?

Em: Skin

Shelley: And when I touch other parts of my arm, it feels hard. I wonder what the hard part it?

Ra: Bone. Also there is blood on our arms. Blood is like a tomato.

Br: Actually, we have muscles and they protect our bones. If we take out water and blood, we’ll die.

Mo: If we don’t have blood we cannot move

An: If somebody eats us, it will be poison, and they’ll die.

Ed: If we don’t have blood, we die.

Ma: Blood is made up of food we eat.

Mo: We can’t drink blood.

Sh: If our blood comes out of our bone, what should we do?

Ra: We can’t drink blood, only vampires can drink blood. They like blood. Vampires have two teeth and make two holes and they drink blood. Vampires come out at night.

Be: Animals also have blood.

Em: Vampire is only a story.

Ke: Grandpa eats banana and yoghurt (the context of Ke’s comment was that he heard “grandpa” when Ra said “vampire”)

Br: Sometimes vampires sneak out.

 As you can see, our thoughts go from one thing to another and the challenge is for our teachers to keep us connected to the theme that we are exploring. We held hands in a circle and received many messages from our brains on what actions we can do. Our legs received messages from our brains, our arms received messages from our brains and our ears listened to what was being said and our eyes looked at our friends and teachers. The last action that we did was curl up and sleep. Shelley didn’t tell us to wake up so many of us lay down for a while longer. Rafael started to get up because his brain told him to wake up. Shelley told us that in the morning, her brain tells her to wake up too.

A: Brain tells us to wake up

Ra: Nobody tells me move but my brain tells me to move

Ma: My brain tells me to stand up

Our teachers are so impressed with our knowledge about our bodies and they are constantly making us think about ourselves and welcome all of our answers. We decided to go to the park early this morning as the weather report said that it would rain around 10am………….and sure enough we did the right thing. We returned from the park at around 10.15am and when we looked out of the window, it was pouring. We had fun playing with our friends and really enjoyed making new friendships. Li and Em loved climbing up the slide and held each other around the waist, when they slid down. Towards the end of our park time we all went up to the top of the big slide and made trains. We tried to slide down while still holding onto our friends however this didn’t always work out. We laughed so much.

We completed our summer holiday drawing and stories and are in the process of making birthday cards for our many friends who will be celebrating in October. Our birthday cards take a lot of time as we each make an individual one and then tell our teachers what our wishes are for our friends. Some of us even write our own wishes and some of us ask our teachers to write them down for us. We sang our “Hello” song and enjoyed going to the park early in the day. It gave us a lot more continuity to our day and the planned discussions and learning that our teachers had prepared for us.

 When Mo came to school this morning he was so excited to talk about the leaves that are changing colour. When we went to the park we noticed that there were leaves in different colours. Some were yellow, some were yellow and green; some were brown and yellow etc. so we decided to collect some and we took them back to school to examine using magnifying glasses. When leaves fall off the trees it means that the season is changing from summer to Autumn. Some people call Autumn, Fall because the leaves fall of the trees. We enjoyed looking at them through magnifying glasses together with a cicada, a beetle and some large and small pine cones.

Do you know that figs grow on trees? Well, Liezel has a fig tree outside of her apartment and she brings bags of figs to school every day. There were so many figs so Kai decided to look up a recipe for fig marmalade. So the Flowers Class cooks were at it again. We cut and chopped with our new real knives that Shelley bought in America. They are real knives that do not cut you. Can you imagine that there are knives that can’t cut your skin? Well we have them in our class and we are grateful that our teachers trust us enough to use real knives, rather than plastic ones. The figs cooked with cinnamon sticks, lemon juice, water and sugar for a long time and now they are in glass jars in the refrigerator. We are wondering what the fig marmalade tastes like….hmmmm?

Thanks for a fabulous day in Flowers Class. We are looking forward to continuing our discussion on our “Body as a Working Machine” and much much more.

Have a great evening

OXOXOXOXOX All the children in Flowers Class