April 22: Happy Earth Day!

On a beautiful Summerーlike day, we celebrated Earth Day! In fact, throughout this week, we have been talking, singing and doing fun activities to think about our one and only “big house” that we live on :)

Land, Water and Grass Animals
Originally this activity was aimed to be done outside on the balcony but when we arrived at school, we noticed that our balcony was still very wet from last night’s rain…Instead, we brought three tubs on one table each containing fake grass, blue tissue paper and kinetic sand. We were spoilt with choices and it was hard to choose which animals to pick! Of course the kinetic sand was the most popular tub and it was a bit tricky to keep the sand only inside the tub….Oh well, after all, anything goes! Together with Tamara, L, E, J and S spent most of the morning sorting the animals and adding more tools like pots, trucks and cars! J was very busy sweeping up the sand on the floor!

Coconut Tree
On Monday, we will be celebrating the World Book Day. Although we want to keep it a surprise what the class theme will be, we can give you one hint: we made a coconut tree🌴 On a big piece cardboard box, Liezel showed how to make a long brown streak using a crayon. Hikaru and Reika were particularly eager to help and came up with a fantastic idea to write letters on our coconut tree! Hmm…that’s a give away. Can you guess which book?

Paper Making
Do you know how paper is made? What if you can make it with the things you have in your kitchen? What you need: one bowl, one plastic bottle, one plastic bag, one sieve, a piece of thin cloth, few towels, cutting board and a piece of A4 paper. Step 1) Pour some water in the bowl and soak the piece of paper. Wait for fifteen minutes or more (you can leave it over night). Step 2) Once the paper is nice and soggy, tear the paper in little bits. Step 3) Take the bits of paper out of the water and replace them in the plastic bag. Get the cutting board and stomp it over the plastic bag to cut the bits into smaller bits. Step 4) Take the bits and replace them into the plastic bottle and fill one third of the bottle with water. Then shake up the bottle! Add water up to the top and shake some more! Step 5) Wet the thin cloth and place it over the sieve and pour in the content of the bottle, making a thin layer of digested paper. Let the water drain for a while. (Make sure you do this in the sink or over a tray to let the excess water leak through the cloth!) Step 6) Carefully place the cloth (with the layer of digested paper) on a dry towel and fold the towel over the cloth to take away the wetness. Repeat this a couple of times. Step 7) Dry the cloth and the thin layer of paper over night. Once the thin layer has dried up, peel it off the cloth and Tadaaa! Thanks to C, K and K for participating in this process with such curiosity!

Yarn Earth Art
Here J, S and J enjoyed making our Mother Earth from yarn! On a tray, we mixed some white glue and water and dipped strips of green, blue and brown yarn. Fighting back our fear of getting our fingers wet and sticky, we picked up the gooey strips of yarn and placed them inside a circle made from yarn. The trick to this activity is to make sure all the strips of yarn are disgustingly soggy! Once they are dry, you will be able to hang it like a dream catcher!

Circle Time
C brought in a perfect book for the day: Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers. We asked her what the book is about and she explained, “It’s about a baby crying!” She also mentioned about “the Sun.” So where do we live? C answered, “Tokyo!” When we were shown a picture of a planet, R answered with confidence, “a big house!” Yes, indeed, our planet is like a humongous house where we all live in! Just then John John came downstairs from the office and we all sang “Happy Birthday dear Earth🌍!” Then Curious George joined our circle! He was very thirsty and took a bottle of water and drank it all up! When he was finished he didn’t know what to do with it. So do you know what he did? He threw the bottle on the floor! No Curious George! You cannot just throw it, we have to put it in a “garbage bin” as S pointed out or you can recycle ♻️it. C kindly showed Curious George where to place the bottle inside the classroom. We also talked about other ways to recycle. For example, we can make paper out of old paper or you can take an old can or bottle and make a musical instrument out of it by putting different things inside. We tried putting in some pompoms, bells and twigs and compared how the sound changed each time. To finish our circle time, we played a fun game shaking the can ad each time the music stopped, the person who had the can in the hand had to go and wash our hands before snack time!

Park Time
After a very busy morning, we headed to Step Park meeting the Petals friends and teachers. We played by the big slide again but this time, many of us took our shoes off just like our Petals friends! By the time we got back, we were all drenched in our own sweat!

Thank you for another lovely day!

Love from all the children in Buds xoxo