That Blue and Green Planet

During circle time, we talked about how we will have International Month celebration next month, February. Our teachers explained that it was an opportunity for everyone to share something about where they were from– our friends came from all sorts of countries.

“But, before that,” Pauline began. “Do you know where can we find all these places? What planet are they on?” she asked, while holding up the book, The Solar System, by Sue McMillan. We saw a page with lots of round things against a backdrop of stars.

“The yellow one?” A guessed.

“No, that’s the hot sun. We can’t live there; it’s too hot,” A said. “We live on the Earth planet and it has green on it,” He explained. He’s right– we live on the planet Earth! Pauline said that the Earth is the only planet that has water and good air to breathe. Other planets are too hot, or too cold. The biggest planet called Jupiter always has storms– just imagine if we lived there and every day there will be a typhoon! We saw a picture of the moon, and how it can change shapes.

“Sometimes, it’s in the shape of a banana!” Pauline said, and we giggled. She then flipped to the next page and she asked us what we saw.

“It’s a rock!” A said.

“How about this one? Who is this person?” Pauline said, pointing to someone in a white suit.

“A robot!” A said. Pauline then asked if it was a teacher, police officer, firefighter– to which we all answered no, but couldn’t quite remember the name of the person in the white suit.

“As—” she clued us in.

“Astronaut!” we all chorused. She said that astronauts have gone on a taxi to go to the moon.

“But the taxi can’t fly, so they can’t use it to go to the moon!” we told her. She laughed and said that they take rocket ships that blast off into outer space. She then explained that if on Earth, we throw a ball, and it falls on the floor—

“It will bump on someone’s head,” Z said. — on the moon, if you throw a ball, it will float, or take a long time to fall back down!

“I have another question,” she suddenly said. “Do you think we can live on the moon?” she asked.

“Umm, no.” A answered. “There are no houses on the moon, and there’s no water.” she explained. She was right! We also talked about planets that are farthest from the sun, like Uranus.

“We can’t live there because it’s super cold!” Z said. He’s right– and it’s colder than the weather right now in Tokyo! Speaking of weather, our weather reporters confirmed—

“It’s raining,” Mreported.

“Is it hot or cold?” our teachers asked.

“Hmm.. It’s cold,” K said. Therefore, we weren’t able to go to the park. Instead, we had a freeze dance so we can have a bit of exercise. We enjoyed jumping and dancing around, it was hard to “freeze” when the music stopped! We also welcomed another new friend in Petals– V! Now that all our new friends are together, we taught them our classroom rules song. We showed how to do:\

1. Gentle sounds

“Gentle clap,” R said. “Like this,” and she demonstrated for us while clapping her hands softly.

“Gentle voices and gentle sounds,” A said in a very calm and soft voice.

“Can I say, ‘AHHHH!!!’” Pauline shouted in a very loud voice. Some of us covered our ears.

“No, like this,” R said. “Aaaaahhh,” she demonstrated in a soft voice.

2. Marshmallow feet, walking feet

“I can do it,” U said confidently, and she stood up and walked, her footsteps quiet.

“Like this,” A said, and he also stood up, and walked carefully. Our teachers also showed how we should use listening ears and looking eyes, especially when someone talks to us. All in all, our classroom rules show RESPECT, which means being nice to everybody and everything. Aside from that, our free play time in the morning was quite busy, as we did our New Year shuji with Sayaka, and we played with soft toys with Nimo. Some of our friends also tried to complete the puzzles on the table . That concludes the second day of 2020’s new school year. How about you, how was your day?

Love,

All the happy bunnies in Petals Class