Petals World Map

My goodness it was so cold today! The sun wasn’t shining very brightly in the morning so the air was very chilly. However, the cold weather won’t keep us from going to school and running around Step Park with our best friends! Our parents dropped us off at school like usual, which marks the start of our school day. We had some fun activities prepared for us this morning! We had a generous donation of Baby Wipes from Ti’s family. Thank you R and J! Our teachers stored the baby wipes neatly in the cupboards, after they were done our friends were staring at the empty box wondering what our teachers were going to do with it. We all know by now that one our favorite toys are empty cardboard boxes. This mystical device allows us to do anything and be anything that our imaginative minds can brew up. Each of our friends had a unique way of playing and it was great fun to share our ideas with one another! On one of our tables, we were working with Sayaka to finish up our Shuji activity. Our teachers are going to frame our calligraphy works and post them up on the classroom walls. When you have the time please come into Petals and check our beautiful Shuji! On another table, we played a fun and silly monkey game with Nimo. The game had a hollow tree where we stuck sticks through the trunk of the tree. Then we poured the little monkeys inside the trunk and the monkeys got stuck on the branches so they wouldn’t fall through. We each took turns and rolled the dice and whatever color the dice showed was the stick we had to pull out of the trunk. We didn’t want to give the monkeys an ouchie so we had to be careful which stick to pull. The game was very fun and without thinking we were working on some essential skills like fine motor, following rules, waiting patiently, identifying colors, and thinking ahead. After a very fruitful morning, we packed away our toys and cleared out our carpet area to get ready for our first ballet class of 2020. Once we rolled up the carpet, we sat down and sang some songs together while we waited. We also “sang” Papurika. Emphasis on “sang” because most of our friends don’t know the words and just dance to the beat. Nimo played the tune very slowly for us on the Ukulele and we sang along with him. Even our friends that are still learning Japanese have heard the song many times, but usually are too busy dancing to sing it. It was an interesting new discovery of the song we are so used to listening. Maryna arrived and it was time to start our Ballet lesson. We started with our usual warm up songs. This time Maryna added a new little bit into our routine. She taught us the positions the Ballerinas use. For example, “Position one” is where we stick our heels together and face out toes outside, kind of like a \/ shape. “Position two is where we spread our feet apart with our toes facing outside, and “Position Six” is where our feet are together with heels and toes touching. Maryna played a nice tune as we jumped together with the rhythm, but not just normally jumping. We had to jump from position two to six then six to two repeatedly. It was much like a star jump, but we had to be careful where our toes were facing, which made it much more difficult. We enjoyed the rest of our Ballet class dancing to some of our favorite songs. We said our thanks you and good-byes to Maryna and then proceeded to eat our snacks and then have our circle time with Nimo. We sat around a giant world map and we looked at the different countries we were from and where they were in the world. Looking at our countries and comparing them to the size of the world, we are slowly beginning to notice how big the world is. Nimo taught us the Seven Continents of the world. North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Antarctica. We plan to make a song about our Seven Continents soon! As much as we would like to sit down and think about our Continents Song, we needed to start heading over to the park or we wouldn’t have any time to play. At the park we met our Buds and Flowers friends and we all played together. It was very warm at the park because the sun was shining brightly on us! Terrific Thursday! Looking forward to Fantastic Friday! Hope everyone stays warm and has a lovely evening! We will see each other again tomorrow!

Love, Earthing Petals