Natural art

Wow, it was so rainy when the typhoon came yesterday morning and then, it became a beautiful sunny day. We were sooooo happy to return to school this morning after missing being there yesterday. Our friends and teachers were also happy that we were once again together. On the activity tables we had two sensory trays filled with sand and shells. One of them had white powdery sand in it and the other one had rougher, darker sand. The darker sand looked more like the sand that you see at the beach but Shelley said that she grew up on beaches that also had white powdery sand. We played with scrapers, scoops and shells and loved feeling the sand trickle through our fingers.

In the play area of our classroom, we had a number chart and blocks that fit inside all the columns. Michaela placed all of them inside their correct columns and then she put a whole lot of different ones and made a long tower.

At the other activity table we had our weaving with finger prints and we pasted the remaining ones onto our artwork. It is now complete and Shelley will arrange for it to be framed and then we will auction it to our families and give the money to charity. We also had different coloured pieces of paper, scissors, glue and writing materials to work with freely. We enjoy doing structured activities as well as working on our own projects. When we were in the park, we became creative with the leaves and a tree. We noticed that on the largest tree trunk in the park, there were bumps on the bark. They looked rubbery and a little like honey. We touched them and felt that some of them were sticky. So we collected a whole lot of leaves and attached them to the gluey bits. We were surprised that they stayed stuck to the tree. So we took a few more and a few more and made a beautiful natural art work. You can see from the photos how the leaves look on the tree.

Our Show and Tell is held when we come back from the park, just before we get ready for lunch. Today we swapped Lucinda and Alexis, so Lucinda did her Show and Tell today. She brought a “Matrooshka” doll with her. We were amazed because we only saw one doll and when she opened the doll up, there was another doll inside it; and she opened that one up and there was another one and another one and another one until we counted five dolls. She showed us that the first one was the biggest one and the last one was the smallest one.

When we asked her where she got her “Matrooshka” doll from, she said it was from her room. And when we asked her where she bought it, she told us that she didn’t buy it, it was just there in her house. Shelley then showed us the “Matrooshka” dolls that are in the display cabinet. She had four of them and one of them had ten dolls in total. The small one was so small, you could hardly see it.

We had such fun this morning because we went up to look at the third floor. We had music there and saw that soon we will have our own outdoor play space at Ohana. We used different ethnic musical instruments and showed one another how we thought you played them. We sang songs together and then swapped so that we could all have a turn to use them. Hisami also did some facial yoga with us which we had never done before. We made a lion face, stretched our ears, stretched our cheeks, raised our eyebrows, made a crinkly nose etc. We did some deep breathing as well which our teachers said is a really good thing to do when we are upset or angry.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.