Pinata’s and Trees

This morning Ava, Nile, Eito, Riko, Adam and Arata made their big autumn leaves from colored construction paper. In the carpet area the toy cars were very popular and many of us set up a start and finish line to race the cars across the floor. Ava and Adam worked with the wooden blocks together on the carpet and then moved to the second table where we saw lots of cork boards, wooden shapes, hammers and small nails. These activities are always popular as many of us like hammering in the nails. On the main table we saw there was lots of newspaper, some sticky tape, a large cardboard tube and a pair of scissors. At the side

we saw a newspaper tree which we liked and wanted to make one ourselves. To do this we needed to firstly roll a sheet of newspaper around the cardboard tube and then when it came near the end we inserted another sheet and carried on rolling. We kept on going until all the sheets were used up and then used the sticky tape to hold the newspaper in a roll.

We took out the cardboard tube from the center and using a pair of scissors we cut down the length of the tube about half way 3 or 4 times. Once all the cutting had been done we were able to pull from the center and watched as it grew and grew in size to make a wonderful newspaper tree. When we came back from the park we did a wonderful circle time with Ayaka. We noticed the beautiful Halloween piñata hanging from the ceiling in the classroom. Eito’s mother Chiharu brought in the piñata to show everyone what we will be making in class on the 24^th October in preparation for Halloween on the 31^st. We also got to hold and try the weight of the newspaper sticks we will use to hit the piñata. Ayaka then sang a wonderful Japanese song with us called ‘Donguri, Donguri koro, koro which means rolling acorn. Thank you Chiharu, they all look fantastic and we are all so excited. On the carpet we made a small autumn tree using construction paper and then all together we tore some sheets of newspaper and made a huge tree. It was so big it went all the way up to the ceiling. Wow!! Tomorrow we will start making a colored autumn tree together with newspaper. We hope it looks good.