Shadows and fluttering leaves

The room was all dark at one end this morning when we arrived and we saw a bright light coming from the table. It was a projector and it was projecting a big square up onto the wall. We took our leaf pictures we started yesterday and projected them up onto the wall. Eito Adam, Nile, Kosei and Marc all came to the table and wanted to make their own leaf pictures using the Montessori outlines. They placed the wooden outlines onto a piece of spare paper and drew the outlines. Then freehand we drew in the veins to the leaves. After drawing several leaves we placed a sheet of projector film on the top and using big markers we traced the pencil lines underneath. We could then take it to the projector and make them look very big on the wall. Adam and Eito also drew a few things on the projector film and then realized that the shadows from their hands looked really funny. Adams hand and marker looked like a big angry monster. We soon realized that we could put other things on the projector too. Soon we had a whole line of chairs and took turns seeing if our friends could guess what we had placed there by its shadow. We tried cell phones, leaves, toy animals and even cars. This was a lot of fun. Jeremy, Jessica, Ethan and Ryan came to the table to add the tissue paper to the roller paintings they made earlier this week. The park was nice and warm and many of us spent our time in the sandbox digging and making things while a few of us went to the climbing bars and practiced hanging upside down with the teachers help. When we came back to the classroom we checked the calendar and put the markers in the right place for the days, date and month. We then played a fun catching game firstly with a large handkerchief. The teachers threw the handkerchief in the air and we saw if we could catch it. Kosei did something really nice when one of his friends caught it, he started to clap. We tried the handkerchief a few times and then thought we needed something a little harder and so we tried a real leaf. It was a bit harder to catch as it fluttered down all over the place. Finally we played a game in pairs where we used the silk leaves and when the teachers threw them in the air we saw which of us could catch the falling leaves. Have a great weekend. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako