Design and Giraffes

Happy Tuesday! After a fun dance class with Maryna, we headed out to Step Park. As we were about to leave Ohana, surprisingly the rain started to pour! We immediately went back to Flowers and enjoyed a longer circle time😊

CIRCLE TIME

For our craft this morning, we tried to create designs that only involved triangles and squares. It took us by surprise to see how amazing our designs could be with just triangles and squares! We can’t wait to see this art project on our class quilt wall! Talking about designs, in circle time, we talked about designs that we could see on animal prints.

QUESTION OF THE DAY (Do you like giraffes?)

Before discussing the giraffe’s body print, we talked about today’s question of the day.

(NO, we don’t like giraffes!)

              Re: Because giraffe has black tongue.

              Ri: It’s not cute.

              Sh: Because I think they are stinky. Something like a skunk smell.

              Z: Zongzong no. Don’t like kirin.

(YES, we like giraffes!)

              Yu: Because they are so cute! It’s very tall and so happy!
              M: Because they are cute. I like the baby giraffes.

              J: Because they are my friends. I can go on its back and go to park.

              Ai: Their faces are cute!
             Y: I like their face.

              T: Yes, they are scary!
             O: Because I can step.

              Ma: Yes, because when I always see giraffe, I always touch the body.

It was interesting to hear what our friends thought about giraffes. We enjoyed listening to our friends’ ideas and at times giggled to hear some comments that we haven’t heard before.

Going back to pattern and design, we focused our attention to giraffe’s body print. Without looking at a photo, we tried to guess what pattern a giraffe’s body print is.

              Mi: Brown, yellow, brown, yellow

              Sh: White, brown, white, brown

              Re: White, yellow, white, yellow

We all cheered when Vieda showed us a photo of a giraffe! Then, we had a short quiz about giraffes to see how well we know giraffes.

QUIZ TIME

#1. How many bones does a giraffe have on its neck?

              M: 4!

              Re: 8!

              Vieda: It’s a number smaller than 8.

              Ri: 6?

              Vieda: It’s a number smaller than 8 but bigger than 6.

              T: 10!

              Yuhi: 7!

That’s correct! We put our hands on our neck and felt our bones. We were thrilled to learn that we have the same number of bones on our neck as the giraffe’s! Reiri said, “We don’t look like giraffe’s neck because the giraffe’s neck is longer!”.

#2. Do male and female giraffes eat leaves the same way? First, what is a male?

              Ju: I know “male”. I think it’s a person giving things like a mailman!

              Ma: “Male” is like what you get from the box. (Ah, a MAILBOX!).

              Shelley: Here’s a clue! Male is like Cameron, Axel, Nimo…

              Ty: Only boys! Male means boys!

We tried to recall how giraffes eat the leaves from a tree when we visited Tama Zoo last year.

              Mi: Some giraffes rip and eat the leaves.

              Ma: They use their mouths to eat the leaves!

              Sh: They chew like this!

We found it fascinating to know that males eat leaves growing higher than they are, while females eat at the same level as their body.

We also learned that a baby giraffe has a special name, too! It’s called a calf.

#3. Can giraffes jump?

Re answered YES while the rest of the class said NO! Guess what the correct answer was? It’s a YES😊 Ma raised his hand and shared his thought. He said, “I’m small so I can jump, but Cameron cannot because of the roof! “. We laughed when we learned that giraffes can easily jump over things that are the height of a tall man!

We could not believe that a tall giraffe can jump over things! Vieda told us about an interesting thing about their walking. They swing both right legs forward at the same time and then both left legs. We got excited and tried to walk like giraffes! Ju said, “Wow, like Superman!”.

#4. Are giraffes quiet animals? Do they make sounds?

Before answering the question, we enjoyed producing the animal sounds that Vieda mentioned. We even did a guessing game of animal sounds! Most of us thought that giraffes do not make any sounds at all. We were so surprised to hear the sounds the giraffes make! We were not able to recognize that they were the giraffe’s sound!

We can’t wait to learn more about designs that we can create. We feel lucky to learn design from animal prints. Perhaps, we can look at plants and other resources in nature and learn from their design.

Love,

Flowers XOXO