A Birthday Surprise for Gaelle
The weather is lovely and every one was in a great mood to throw a birthday surprise to one special person in Ohana. With bright smiles and happy hearts, we end another wonderful week knowing that we’ve created wonderful learning memories together.
One of our stations during Free Play Period had two activities which were the Memory Game and the colorful snapping chain. For our older friends, Erika introduced the “Memory Game”. The mechanics of the game was that we had to remember where two of the same image were placed on a 4x4 grid when it is flipped down. It took us some time to understand the mechanics but after a few tries, some of our older friends were beaming a big smile on their faces when they get a round correctly. Our friends E, N, Sa, and R had a fun time playing the Memory Game with Erika. They were excited whenever a peg was about to be flipped to see if the answer they gave was correct. Au, Az, Da, and Ra also took on the challenge of building a tower by making sure that they place the correct size of boxes on top of each other or else it would fall.
The other activity that we had encouraged us to work in strengthening our fine motor skills by snapping together buttons. It also challenged us to do patterns as we had to make sure that we partner together black and white buttons so that it would snap together. On another table, we designed buildings using paper tubes and colored markers. After designing it, we placed gold & silver semi circle shaped circles on it to represent windows which we start to discuss next week. It was mostly our younger friends who took charge in designing the buildings that we will soon include in our Earth map. With their small fingers, our younger friends worked finding which grip they were most comfortable with when holding the colored markers.
Erika started to sing the songs “B-I-N-G-O” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in the tune of “Happy Birthday to You.” We pointed out that she was singing the wrong lyrics and corrected her that it should be “Happy birthday to you!” Soon, friends from Petals class, the Flower class, and the office came down and we all sang special songs, gave birthday cards, and a special cake to our beloved Gaelle.
Before we started our Circle Time, Erika and Tamara helped us shook our sillies off by doing some funny moves. We formed a circle by holding each other’s hands and went around on one direction. There was an outburst of giggles when Erika asked us to move towards the opposite direction and we all suddenly tumbled down on each other. Our favorite move was when we were asked to squat and jump up high… that move certainly took our sillies off. After a very active start to our Circle Time, we all sat down and did some breathing exercises to help us calm down. Erika read to us, “Ravi’s Roar” by Tom Percival . The story was about a little boy named Ravi who at times could not control his temper that he would turn into a roaring tiger. When he turned into a roaring tiger, his friends and siblings would be scared to play with him which made Ravi lonely and realize that how he might have reacted scared people away from him. The story reminded us that there may be times that we can get frustrated and want to act like a roaring tiger when we are mad but often times, the best way is to try to cool off our emotions with the guidance of our teachers.
One of the settings in the story that Erika read to us was in a park. Since the weather was lovely this morning, we all went out to the park. We had a lovely walk as most of our new friends have already got used to holding on to the rope and getting back up on their feet when they accidentally trip. While in the park, some of us joined a group of Flower class children in building their sand castle. We helped them by providing them the water they needed to “stick the sand together”. We went back and forth to the faucet and filled up pails of water until they built their castle. It was nice being able to play and work together with our friends from an older class. We hope you have a lovely weekend!
Love,
Buds Class Children