Happy Easter!

With the Easter Sunday coming up this weekend, we had an early Easter day in Buds.  We loved doing the crafts and the Easter egg-hunting!  Guess where we did the Easter egg hunting?....It was not at the park, it is where John John stays on Fridays and it is rather up high….hmm….Please have a think about it while we tell you about what the day was like...

 Morning Activities

 Easter Egg Sun-Catcher

At home, you would probably not like it when we start tearing a box of tissue paper but actually tearing and ripping are one of the crucial fine motor skills we practice at Ohana.  Some of us do not yet have enough strength to use a clothing peg on the laundry line and by tearing a piece of tissue paper, we learn how to use our pinching fingers and slowly develop our muscles to do more complicated movements.

For this activity, we combined the tearing and sticking (on a piece of contact paper) to make a oval-shaped sun catcher!  Mostly we enjoyed the ripping sound of the tissue paper gently tearing into strips and then into smaller pieces and how satisfying it feels to be able to do it all by ourselves plus it looks so pretty in pastel colors of purple, blue, orange and pink!

 Lines And Shapes With Yarn

Our art work is always evolving.  Before the Spring break, we created a piece which we called “The Cosmic Lines” on a black construction paper. This week we added pieces of colorful tissue paper and cellophane paper.  Today, with the help of Goh-san we stuck strips of colorful yarn using a paintbrush and glue.  We loved following the line made with yarn.  L suggested to make a “mountain” and he made a nice wavy line.   

 Color Coded Puzzles

Yes, puzzles are not easy but we like the challenge!  Some of us like to work alone in peace while others like to work together with our friends budding their heads with one another.  Sometimes, we called out the names of the objects (like “car”) and sometimes we called out the colors (like “blue”) and eventually we would add the two together and say, “blue car” :)

 Balance Beams and Colorful Balls

Walking on the balance beam is too easy?  How about if we added 1) holding a bucket full of balls with 2) an obstacle over the balance beam?  You see, still we can manage it :)  We are born circus performers!

 Circle Time

The big question of the day: What is inside an egg?  “Egg!” Answered many of us...We closed our eyes and compared the sound of an egg shaker and that of a real egg...one made busy rattling sounds but the other one didn’t make any sound...What about the shape?  We thought it looked like a circle but when we put it against a drum, it wasn’t quite the same circle shape...Nanako explained that an egg is more an oval shape and L who was thinking all the while spoke up, “chick!”  Yes, inside an egg is a chick and we had the perfect book for that: First the by Laura Vaccaro Seeger.  We also sang a song called “The Way The Bunny Hops” and we hopped, wiggled our nose, flopped our ears and shook our cotton tails.

Instead of walking to Step park, we were divided in two groups.  The first batch went upstairs to the office floor outside the balcony garden where John John was waiting for us (Yes, there we did our Easter egg hunting! ) while the rest stayed downstairs and played with balls and bubbles.  We interchanged the group so that we all had a turn to have fun looking for the colorful eggs between the flowers and lettuce leaves :)

Thank you for another lovely day!

Love from the children in Buds xoxo