Green Day

♬Happy Birthday to You〜Happy Birthday Dear W〜Happy Birthday to You〜♫♪
It was W’s two -year-old birthday!! And it was the last day of the Teachers Appreciation Week! It was also Ireland Day and we used lots of green colors through activities and story telling. Even our hands turned green for some of us :)

Vertical Green Painting
Most days, we paint over the table, horizontally. We take a brush and wave our hands from side to side but today, C and L took a brush and waved their hands up and down! It also felt quite different today because we used the balcony space to do it and we had to wear a smock to cover our upper body plus a jumper suit to cover our lower body!

Scavenger Hunting
In a sensory tub, we found lots of brown leaves and strips of tree barks. At first we were not quite sure if we could touch them. Seeing this, Erika kindly guided us to the sensory tubs and showed us the different textures of the leaves and pointed at the black dots on a tree bark. S used his senses ｰ see, touch and smell ｰ to figure out that the dots could be mushrooms. Among all the brown colors, guess what we found? We found green leprechauns hiding between the leaves and barks. In Ireland, people believe that leprechauns, fairies and giants too live in this world and there are many interesting stories to tell about the funny creatures. The green somehow represented the fresh new plants ready to come out for the Spring and Summer.

Green Playdough
On Wednesday, if you remember, we made a new batch of play dough and gave it a magical pink touch, ready for the birthday party. Today, the same play dough was given another magical touch by Liezel and turned into green play dough! After kneading and shaping, our big and little fingers turned green too! Together with Tamara, J, K and R spent a good time making special birthday cupcakes and ice cream cones.

Balance Beams, Yoga Mats and Rainbow Colored Blocks
Even the floor was green today with balanced beams and yoga mats creating a fun circular shape. Inside the circle, there were wooden blocks in colors of red, yellow, green and blue, like a rainbow. Have you heard of a secret about leprechauns hiding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Hmm…I wonder if any of us found the pot today? K and W were especially busy here mounting and dismantling the blocks on dump trucks and tractors.

Circle Time
We all gathered around the balance beams and we danced and balanced ourselves on the beams. We sat down and pretended that we got on a bus and we first sang one of our favorites,The Wheels on The Bus. For our second song, we sang Love is Something if You Give it Away because the teachers explained that they have been receiving so much love from us over this week. Nanako showed us a booklet with a page with hand written messages and drawings and we spotted some familiar faces like S, T and J. Even during free play, Caroline, one of the OPTO parents visited Buds class with another special gift for each teacher – we overheard the teachers talking about taking pictures!? It would be an understatement to say the teachers liked our gifts❤︎ It is nice to share our love :)

As part of Ireland Day, Nanako told us an Irish Legend. We were not quite sure what the story was about. C guessed that it would be “funny” and T guessed, “scary!” So we all made funny faces, scary faces, scared (frightened) faces and sad faces. Remember, Nanako “told” the story, she didn’t read from a book; she used finger puppets, props and acting to tell the story of Children of Lir. When the four children were turned into four swans by an evil stepmother, we all spread our wings and flew over Sea of Moyle and to the Isle of Gloria until we heard the sound of church bells which finally broke the spell and turned the swans back in to children.

Just then, we heard a alarming sound of FIRE and we all covered our mouths and nose and safely made our way outside. Phewww…we were glad to hear that we were only practicing today. Better be prepared then not! We all went back into the classroom and enjoyed our snacks and headed to the park afterwards :)

Thank you for a green full day!

Love from all the children in Buds xoxo