Catch a Sakura + March Birthday Celebration
The Big Five Animals of South Africa
Yesterday’s South Africa day showed how brave we were as we managed to overcome our fear of hearing the loud roars and sounds of the BIG FIVE! Each animal had a distinct feature which are new terms that could be added to our increasing English vocabulary:
The lion has hair around its face called “MANE”
The elephant has a long “TRUNK”
The leopard has a unique “PRINT” on its skin
The water buffalo has two curved “HORN(s)” on the side of its head
The rhinoceros has a “HORN” in the middle of its face
To review yesterday’s “roaring” fun adventure, there were drawn images of the BIG FIVE’s faces in which we could either color with crayons or paste printed animal paper on. R, S, K, T, and C occupied themselves with cutting paper into small pieces. While cutting, a lot of interesting topics came up such as:
Who can cut the smallest bit of of paper
How can we fit the paper inside the animals’ faces?
Who can cut the most pieces of paper?
What can we form with all the pieces of paper?
What shade of yellow should we use that best suit the animals?
Birthday Cake Making + Celebration
To prepare for our March birthday celebration later in the day, we made a fresh batch of playdough that we could mold into something special for our celebrants. E, H, J, L, and P got their hands busy with rolling, kneading, forming, and decorating! We were given flowers and toy animals to use for decorating our dear friends’ special cakes. Lots of opportunities to socialize took place such as:
collaborating
sharing and taking turns
parallel play
This activity not only taps on our creativity… it also provided us a with a sensory learning experience wherein we felt different textures with our fingers.
Having the projector on usually means that we have someone special virtually visiting us. Today, we were delighted to have El’s family, A, L, and J, and T’s dad, J, visit us to celebrate our dear friends’ birthdays. We were in for such a wonderful treat as we were stories of McQueen and Peppa Pig which have been our favorite characters the past few weeks.
We sincerely wish E and T our heartfelt congratulations for turning a year older!
The Black Mat with Colorful Objects
Two black yoga mats were laid out and on top of it were various objects (wooden blocks with see through colorful interior & spiky rollers). K used the rollers as a means for his toy truck to push; J, Ji, and W discovered a fun way to view the underwater images projected on the wall by looking at it through the colorful wooden blocks! They were amazed to see how the fishes changed its “color” upon changing the block that they were using. At one point, J said she saw two colors at the same time by looking through two different blocks.
Rhythm Patterns
We have been doing lots of changing of lyrics to our favorite tunes activities. This helps us be creative and think of new ways to “spice up” the resources we have. This morning, we changed the lyrics of the following songs:
“Chika Chika Boom Boom” - we use the song to describe what each of us were wearing/ doing
“Banana Dance” by Dr. Jean Feldman - we use this song to do our morning roll call
“Where is Thumbkin?” - we use this song to do sight reading of each other’s names
“Catch a Sakura” Outdoor Activity
We took a walk along the roads leading to Roppongi Hills which was blooming with a lot of cherry blossoms! In congruence with our “Rhythm Pattern” activity, we changed the lyrics of Perry Como’s “Catch A Falling Star” to “Catch a Sakura” while picking up fallen cherry blossoms and waving “Hello” & greeting passerby “Good Morning!” and “Hello!”. We hope that we brightened up their day with our smiles and waves. B was in all smiles during the entire walk!
We hope all of you are having a lovely Tuesday so far!
Love,
Buds Class Children