Learning about Respect

Good afternoon moms and dads, we hope you all had a great Friday! We had another great day at school! We started our morning by finishing up the crafts we had been working on. On our small table, we had a few hand mirrors. Our teachers asked us to face the mirror and try making a face. Such as, happy, sad, angry, scary, and silly, just to name a few. We loved seeing how our faces changed when we made different faces! We tried really hard to make an angry face, but we always ended up laughing! After our table activities, we could either play with some play dough to make shapes, or we could sit down on the floor and play with the train set. Our friends all worked together to make one big train rail!

After our morning free play time, we gathered in a circle to sing some songs. We first sang the, “How Are You Today?” song. J requested the “Good Morning” song and A asked for the “Moana” song. After we sang the two requested songs, we sang, “Ants Go Marching” up to five. Then Nimo had an idea to change the ants marching into pumpkins go rolling. After we practiced singing the song we played a little rhythm game. It was called, “Who Took the Candy from the Trick Or Treat Bag?”. First, we patted our lap and clapped our hands to the rhythm Nimo set. Then we would sing, “Who took the candy from the trick or treat bag? Nimo took the candy from the trick or treat bag?” Then whoever’s name was called would say, “Not me!”. Petals would say, “Then who!?”, then the next friend would be called until we found the person who took the toy candy! It was a fun way to practice clapping to the rhythm and singing our friends' names.

Nimo handed a few of us some drums and we practiced drumming together on the same beat. While the 5 drummers kept the beat, Nimo played the guitar and we sang some Halloween songs! After the song, we would pass the drums to the friends next in line and sang another song until everyone had a turn to be a drummer. We would soon find out why we practiced banging on the drums. Nimo showed us a picture of a pretty drum, we all knew what it was. Petals excitedly shouted, “Taiko!”. On Monday we will be going on the bus to Ito’s house to dig potatoes. Then on Tuesday, Moko-sensei will come to Petals Class to teach us how to play Taiko! Nimo had the perfect book for us called, “Manners Mash-up” by Various Illustratiors. It was a colorful and fun book about what to do and what not to do in certain places. The very first page of the book was a bus! We looked at the picture and our friends tried to think what is ok and not ok to do in the bus.

M: Sit down

R: We need to put on our seat belts.

J: No mess, no food!

Nimo: Maybe you can have a small snack if you’re hungry, but if you do drop something, who needs to pick it up?

J: Me!

M: Not too loud.

Now we know what we need to do on the bus for potato digging on Monday! The next page we looked at was a picture of the classroom. Nimo pointed at the teacher and had us pretend it was Moko-sensei.

Nimo: Can we talk when Moko-sensei is talking?

A: No! Raise your hand.

Nimo: Can we bang on the drums when Moko-sensei is talking?

R: Dame (No)

Y: Listen to Moko-sensei.

J: Hands to yourself.

The last page we looked at in the book was called, “How to be a good visitor”. Another perfect one to look at because we will all be visitors in Ito’s house.

Nimo: Who do we need to listen to when we go to Ito-san’s house?

R: Listen to the teachers.

Nimo: That’s right, and?

J: Mommy and daddy?

Nimo: Yes! And?

Petals: ???

Nimo: We will be visitors in Ito-san’s house so we need to listen to Ito-san. If they say we can’t go inside their house, are you going to go inside?

Petals: No!

Nimo: We need to show “Respect”. Does anyone know what, “Respect” means?

Petals: ?

Nimo told us that showing respect to other people means using our listening ears, saying please and thank you, using gentle hands with everything, and not doing things we wouldn’t like done to us. When we are on the bus we need to respect the bus and the bus driver by not making a mess and sitting down nicely with our seatbelts. We show Ito-san respect by listening to them and making sure we don’t go into places that aren’t welcome. We can show Moko-sensei respect by listening to Moko-sensei’s instructions and not being disruptive when she is talking. We can bang on the drums, but we also still need to be gentle.

Before we had snack and went to the park, we did a fun little art activity! Our teachers handed us a white paper plate with some holes. First, we colored the plate with crayons then stuck some stickers on it to decorate our taiko! Then we used the big toy needles to thread yarn through the holes. Once we were finished we had our very own taiko!

Thank you all for another wonderful week! Hope everyone gets lots of good rest because we are going to be super busy next week!

Love,

Petals