Our wonderful visit to France

Today we visited another country; France. Later in the morning we had two special guests Nina our French after school class teacher and her young friend Arki. In the morning when we arrived we saw that the big class canvas was dry. Yesterday we marbled the surface using the same technique as we used on our Valentine’s Day boxes. It is looking good and as we have so much pink on it we decided to add some colored flowers to the painting. We had some Ohana flowers printed on paper but we need to transfer the images to the canvas. Luckily we had a way to do this. First we chose the flower we wanted to transfer and cut this from the page. We then brushed some acrylic medium onto the surface of the picture and let it dry. It will need quite a few layers before we can use them on our picture but each layer luckily doesn’t take long to dry. We will add some more layers tomorrow and attach them on Monday. On the second table we saw our Phonics & Literacy notebooks which we have been using since the beginning of the school year in August. We went back through the books and found any pages that we had missed or not finished. We practiced writing our letters and then added some pictures and further writing to them. They now look very good and will soon need new books for our phonics as many of us have nearly finished them. The two Montessori cube puzzles were very popular this morning with many of us and we were able to complete them quickly. The easel whiteboard and chalkboard were used a lot this morning too. Several of us at a time wanted to use this and so we drew a line down the middle of the whiteboard and shared with our friends. On the chalkboard side the teachers wrote some words which we then erased using a brush and some water to trace the letters away. After packing away the toys and having our yummy snacks it was time to visit France. We saw Nina and Arki arrive with lots of things for us to see and try. We started off by looking at the Europe map and soon spotted France in the middle of Europe. Nina then showed us a snow globe with the Eiffel Tower inside it which when we shook sparkled as lots of pieces of glitter flew up. On the sides of the globe were lots of famous places in Paris to see including: The Eiffel tower, The Arc de Triumph, The Seine river, Notre Dame and the Louvre museum. Looking at a book we saw there are lots of things to do in France such as skiing, walking in Paris, climbing mountains, going to the beach and riding the Metro. We also saw lots of pictures of the people, French passports, the French flag and firework celebrations. We then looked at a page of food and tried to match the food area to the map. Many areas of France are famous for different kinds of food including; quiche, gratin, crepes, baguette bread and escargot. In Paris there were many things to do and see in the book and it was fun looking at the ballet, the science museum and the summer beach areas just like in Odaiba Tokyo. We then looked at a special pop-up book all about castles. This was fun as we could see inside the castle too at all the jobs. On the next page we were excited to see a knight in armour. We also saw a jousting contest and large feats with the King and Queen eating lots of food. We then moved to the table as Nina and Arki had brought lots of yummy food and drinks for us to try. We were introduced to French Baguette bread which we knew and all enjoyed, some Camembert cheese and some grenadine and pomegranate juice. Some of us dint want the cheese but that was okay because we could also have a small macaroon as well. Nina and Arki gave us a special gift from a place called Au Mont Saint Michel which specializes in sable biscuits for us to take home and share with our families. We had lots of yummy food and learned so very much today. We made a nice colored flag with the red, blue and white stripes by coloring the sheet Nina gave us and also colored a sheet of famous French food too. Thank you Nina and Arki. We all said Merci Beaucoup which means ‘Thank you’ and Bon Appetit which means ‘Enjoy your meal’ today. Have a great afternoon and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow

All our love, Darren, Ayaka, Pooja and Ryoan.