T-stools in action

When we saw the rain this morning, we were a little sad as we love our time in the park with our teachers and our friends but………..we did have time to play in the park because the rain stopped; but it was a little bit of a nuisance though! As we arrived at the park, we felt some water drops falling on us from the sky. Shelley felt one fall on her head and she asked Wendy if it was a bird or the rain and Wendy said that it had been the rain. We decided to pack up all the sand toys and continue playing just in case it would stop. And it became lighter and then stopped for a short while so we had time to play running games where we went through our teachers legs at one end of the park and then we ran back and went underneath another of our teachers legs at the other end. This was fun. Then we threw and caught the many different kinds of balls that we have in our park bag and we climbed on the tricky climbing frame; and then there was too much rain, so we went back to school and we had lunch a little earlier than usual. Today we tried sitting on our first T-stool. It is shaped just like the letter “T”, the upper case one. We have to balance our bodies really carefully on it and move around until we feel comfortable. The one we tried out was a smaller one so it was a little too small for Finn. He will sit on a taller one when we start the new school year in August as he is the biggest child in our class. This one is exactly right for Nico and he looked really comfortable when he sat on it. Some of us fell off a few times as we have to concentrate all the time on balancing our bodies and supporting ourselves with our legs and tummy muscles.

One of our activities today was painting the stools. We painted the sitting part in red which will be the undercoat. Then Darren will put a special see through paint over it and maybe even the Ohana logo which is the pretty hibiscus flower. We are looking forward to using them in the new school year and seeing how we can manage sitting on them for circle time, instead of sitting on the mat. We will alternate with sitting on the stools and on the mat.

At the second activity table we had cutting and making whatever we wanted to. We used the squiggly pairs of scissors and different kinds of drawing materials e.g. coloured pencils, markers and regular lead pencils. We chatted while we were working and spoke about what we were doing. Ashling cut small triangles and she said that the big one was the daddy, the next one was the mummy and the smallest one was the baby. Then she took pairs of scissors and said that the biggest one was the mummy etc. and this time she had “girl sisters” and “boy sisters” as well. Renshi made an airplane with a piece of paper and decorated it while Nico practiced his cutting and Maddie drew and cut.

We all played inside our large boxes when we arrived at school and some of us will have the opportunity to take them home today. They are really big so we will only be able to take them home when we go by car!

In our morning circle we sang our “Hello” song, “Open them, shut them”; Tommy Thumb”, “Tap your hands on your knees” (this one Shelley made up and she does this with many of our songs) and “Let’s all clap hands together”. We read a story called “Who is making that noise”. It was not the noisy boys but different kinds of animals hiding behind doors and inside cupboards. In the end, it was the noisy boys!

And now the sun is shining so maybe we will be able to play outside for a while when we go home.

Love Shelley and Darren