On the vine

This morning on the carpet we had lots of blocks to play with and had a great time fitting these together so that the marbles ran down the tracks. On the table there was a new game called ‘connect 4’ which we saw was like a board with red and black counters. We have never played this game before and we did paper, scissors, stone to see who would go first. It was a good game and we really had to concentrate and use our eyes to win. It was a lot of fun and we needed to take turns to play fairly for this. Next to the game was a new puzzle with 4 sections; spring, summer, autumn and winter. The puzzle had about 100 hundred pieces and took us quite a while but we managed to complete it all. On the small table in the home corner there were some magnet toys which were fun to use; one of them was like a small circus and when we joined them together they made a pyramid. The other pieces allowed us to make squares, triangles and cubes but these were a bit more tricky. In the park we collected lots of big leaves. Because of the typhoon last night there were lots of leaves on the ground. The weather was warm and we enjoyed running and playing with the toy trucks. When we came back from the park it was time for Ryan’s ‘Show & Tell’. Ryan brought along a book all about animals such as dogs, fish, insects, and frogs. He showed us all by walking around his favorite page and told us all how he got the book from his grandmother. He answered lots of questions and explained that his favorite page was of snails because the ones in the photo were orange. Tokutaro noticed that they looked a little like the shells hermit crabs use and Ryan explained that they were a bit smaller and were for snails. In circle time we read a book titled ‘Barn dance’ which the children enjoyed as it showed us lots of farm animals dancing with a young boy. We then introduced our excursion next week to the potato digging farm and how the potatoes grow under the ground on vines. We then decided to make our own vine from some soft wire. To do this we all held the long wire in a line and pulled it tight. Darren then started rolling the wire around a cardboard tube really tight. We completed it quite quickly and then added three kinds of leaves; the real leaves from the park we collected this morning, the paper leaves we cut and folded last week and finally the thin colored nylon ones. To attach them we made holes in them with a hole punch or the end of the wire and threaded them along the wire. The wire was like a giant curly spring and so we had to turn them round and round to get them along the wire. We hung the vine in the classroom alongside the piñata pumpkin. We will add more leaves tomorrow morning. Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren and Ayaka