Spiders Webs and Giant Turnips

This morning on the table we saw a whole bucket of newspaper strips, a balloon and a big bowl of white liquid. When we asked the teachers what the items were for they said we are going to make a giant class ghost. The balloon is going to be used for the head, but first we needed to make the head harder by covering it with newspaper and glue. To do this we firstly put on our smocks and then dipped the newspaper into the bowl of glue. We needed to drain the extra glue off for a few seconds and then applied it to the balloon. We could only do the top part of the balloon at first because the newspaper tended to slide off the bottom. We put two or three layers on the balloon and left it to dry for a while. Tomorrow we will add a few more layers to the bottom half. On the main table Eito, Kosei and Adam made their trick or treat bags using heavy sheet plastic. They each cut out a pumpkin shape after drawing around a cardboard former. Using a hole-punch they then made holes around the outside, sewed the two halves together using yarn and put a pipe-cleaner handle on it. They looked really proud of their work. Nile suggested using the cardboard formers as masks and we cut out eyes and decorated them with sparkly shapes, markers and then attached elastic bands for the ear holes. On the main table there was also a tiny white ghost toy which we all saw and put in water to grow. The instructions said it should grow 600% in size over the course of about 10 days. We hope it works and grows. On the play area carpet the trains were very popular today with many of the children and we shared them really well. Ava and Eito worked on the 96 piece seasons puzzle and managed to complete it with very little help from the teachers. After snack time Ayaka read a wonderful book titled ‘Okii na Kabu’ which translates as ‘The Big Turnip’. The farmer can’t pull the turnip out of the ground until others come to help him. Together we then all thought of things we associate with Halloween. We thought of lots of things including; witches, bats, jack-o-lanterns, spiders and spiders webs. We then watched a time lapse video showing how a spider makes his web on the computer. It was easy to see how he makes a perimeter first and then cross lines. Finally the spider moves towards the center spinning a spiral as he goes. We wanted to try and make a spider web ourselves and so we all sat in a circle and firstly passed a ball of yarn to our friends to make a perimeter. We could then throw the ball of yarn to one of our friends on the opposite side of the circle to make the web. We had a lot of fun next seeing if some of our soft toys would get caught in the spider’s web. The rabbit escaped, the octopus, the raccoon and the snake all got caught in the web unfortunately. We then wondered if the spider’s web would catch us too and one at a time we tried crossing the web stepping carefully between the strands. Our friends were very helpful and shouted encouragement to us. Ayaka got caught unfortunately and we all wrapped her in the yarn. As a final activity we all lay on the floor and we saw how slowly the leaves fell to the ground. When we tried to see which thing would hit the ground first, a leaf or a marker we were not surprised to see the marker hit first. When we all tried it with an item of our choice from the room such as a toy car, a foam block etc we were very surprised to see that they all hit the ground at the same time. We thought that maybe the heavier ones would hit first but this was not true. Maybe we need to look into this further tomorrow. Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren & Ayaka