Our new office

Another beautiful fall day greeted us this morning. When we arrived at school we noticed that there was something new inside our classroom. We saw that the small activity table was pushed against the wall and we had markers, pencils, paper, scissors, staplers, punches, stencils, coloured pencils, erasers, sharpeners, glue sticks, tape and sparkly pens on it. Our teachers told us that this was our new office. Well, we spent more than an hour working there; writing, drawing, punching holes, cutting etc. We loooove this table and our teachers decided that we will have it up every day. We were so busy we didn’t even know how long we had been sitting and working there. It is a great pre-literacy learning centre.

We have signs on the wall showing what we have to use and where things go each day. We will get a large paper tray so that we can select paper of our choice; and when we are finished with our leaves sensory table, we will put the keyboard, telephone and other office equipment on it.

Another fun activity that we had this morning was ten pin bowling. Our pins were made out of toilet rolls and each of them had a Halloween picture on them. We had a spider, witch, ghost, trick or treat bag, skeleton, cat, bat, Jack-o-lantern, Happy Halloween sign and Halloween cookies. We made and “alley” on the floor with cardboard and then set up the pins at one end. We used different sized balls and of course, the large ball knocked them all over every time. Our teachers wanted us to use the small balls so that we would have to aim more carefully. When we used the small balls, we didn’t get a strike. Hisami wrote our scores down on a piece of paper and we were each given three turns. We had a great time.

We sat together for one of our circle times and Shelley told us a story about a ghost. She didn’t have a book so we think that it came from her memory.

During the story, she asked us many questions and this was the conversation:

Shelley: “What is a ghost?”

William: “A ghost can fly”

Lilian: “I think a ghost can fly in the sky and hide in the night”

Alexis: “I think a ghost can walk”

Shelley: “I wonder what a ghost is”

Lilian: “I don’t know”

Shelley: “Does anyone know what a ghost looks like?”

Lilian: “It’s white”

William: “It has no legs”

Alexis: “It has a mouth and eyes”

Shelley: “How do we know when a ghost is around?”

All: “They make a noise…………. whoooooooooooo”

Lilian: “They make a noise at night time”

Alexis: “You can hear the noise when we are sleeping”

 And so our story went on and eventually, there was a Halloween parade with someone dressed up as a ghost that did go “whooooooooo”. We laughed and then spoke about the different characters that we were planning on dressing up as for our Halloween party. During the morning William L, told us that he was coming dressed up as a witch but in the afternoon, when Jennifer his sister saw Shelley, she told her that he was going to be a fireman.

We lit a candle inside our pumpkin today and switched the lights off. It was fun to sit and have snack with our Jack-o-lantern giving us light. The light shone inside the pumpkin. We have been running our snack time, all by ourselves lately. One of us is chosen as the teacher and we give our friends instructions. We start off by saying “hands up” and then we count, 1, 2, 3 and sing the song. All of our friends join in enthusiastically and we don’t need our teachers to sing at all.

We changed the calendar and Lilian told us that our Halloween party is on “Friday”. Was today Friday? No, it is Tuesday because yesterday was Monday. This is the way we are trying to work out the days in our class. Sometimes we sing our song which is a guide for us to remember what days follow one another. And some days, when our teacher says, “Yesterday was........” we work out the day.

We clapped the numbers and eventually arrived at 28 which was the date today, and we told our teachers that we didn’t need to change the weather as it was the same as yesterday.

William L completed his Autumn/Fall mobile and we just have to let Miyu and Michaela complete theirs and then will all have made one. We read the book, “Room on a broom”. Some of us know the story as we have the same book at home, and some of us enjoyed listening to the rhymes and the story of a witch on a broom and all the other animals that rode on the broom with her, until she met the dragon. The dragon appeared scary in the beginning but after it saw a “monster”, we realized that everyone, every animal, has something that it is afraid of.

Thanks for a great day……tomorrow is our taiko workshop…….see you at school with your “hachimaki”. We will be leaving school at around 9.40am to walk to the Azabu Kumin centre together with our teachers, friends and mums.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.