What Goes Around, Comes Around

Let’s Make a Forest

     Apart from being aware and cautious about the current situation that we are currently living in, we also need to be currently conscious about the impact that each of one are making on the environment. After all, as of the moment, we only have one planet that we can comfortably live in and it is our responsibility to take good care of it, regardless of what age we are.

     As part of Ohana’s efforts in raising awareness about sustainability in children, we at Buds class have been recycling and reusing all materials that we can use to learn and create something beautiful. With our ongoing theme about shapes and movements plus circles being our focus today, we  have started to make a miniature forest out of used papers, wooden beads and  sticks, and colorful pompoms that we have used a numerous times.

     Together with Erika, we stuck beads, sticks, and pompoms around the rolled up used paper. A couple of us had a brilliant idea of putting in the beads & pompoms inside of the rolls so as to “hide” it and have Erika bring out more of it! We haven't been able to quite visualize how  it’s looking like a forest yet but sure enough we had a blast counting & identifying colors.

Our younger friends enjoyed feeling and squishing the pompoms in their fingers. They also gave a funny reaction when their fingers seemed to get “stuck” on the tape when they touched it.

     Our older friends were more interested in balancing the little wooden sticks and counting. It was also a fun experiment seeing how the rolls of paper would bend if we placed too much beads and pompoms inside of it.

     The wooden beads provided us a lot of gross motor activities as we had to constantly pick up pieces of it from the floor as it kept on rolling around and off the table.

     And also, working on the forest allowed us to socialize with each other and see & adapt to each one’s working style.

 Cherry Blossoms Artwork

     We continued this activity which we started last week because there’s no such thing as too much cherry blossoms, right? Compared to last week, it was interesting too see how our younger friends learned to take interest in properly using the glue stick and pasting circles within the template. Big thank you to our older friends for modeling and showing how to  make our artwork look blooming!

A Mat Full of Circles

     Being on our “mat full of circles” together with John felt like having a lovely picnic outside during spring time with live music. We enjoyed playing our own songs by beating the drums shaking the maracas, ringing the bells, and John playing his guitar. Also, we had a new friend named Victor who sang us a special song with a very funny accent.

     We played with a variety of round shaped objects which helped us in further enhancing our problem solving skills and encouraged us to think out of the box. One example was how do we get the cardboard circles to roll down the slide sideways?

Tracing Circles

     Together with Tamara, we added more circles on our “Circle Portrait” by  tracing around circle cookie cutters/stencils that we’d normally use for playdough activities. The little curves on the sides was fun to trace around as it created a funny sound whenever the marker would go around it.

    We are excited to see how this will turn out!

CIRCLE TIME

     We did something a little bit different for the start of Circle Time today. Instead of just doing a variety of movements on one respective circle, Erika asked us to go around our “circle of circles”. It got a bit confusing when we were asked to  turn and change directions in moving around.

      We also did a few “circle exercises” by laying on our backs, raising our legs and drawing circles up in the air with it. Our lower stomachs had a good workout! Aside from that, we sang and dance to John’s “Oh We Love Shapes” song.

     Whenever we answer back with our names during morning roll call, Erika handed each of us a cherry blossom artwork. After our roll call, we all started sticking the cherry blossoms on our Buds Tree while singing “One Little Flower” to help us keep count of how flowers we were sticking on the tree. And while adding flowers, we saw a black & white striped little worm (pipe cleaner) crawling around it! Ooh! It must have been living on our tree since Halloween!

     We then had a lovely walk to the park and did lots of circle inspired moves such as laying on our backs and moving in circles, catching “fireballs”, and being carried up high by our teachers while turning around.

We hope you all had a lovely day!

  Love, Buds Class Children