William L's Show and Tell

Today we went to see some other people who work in our neighbourhood…..the recycling men. They collect bicycles that are left behind on the street for too long, take them apart and then make new ones. When we went inside the building to the second floor, we saw so many things sorted into sections; there were containers with rear lights and containers with front light; handle bars; the rubber parts for the handle bars, racks for the back of a bicycle, wheels without tyres; tyres without wheels; saddles, pedals and all other parts that you need to make a bicycle. The recycling men were so happy to show us the place where they work. While we looked at everything, they continued working and making bicycles. We took a photo together and are going to make a card to say thank you to them. We sang our “Who are the people in the neighbourhood” song and sang that the recycling men make bicycles.

During the morning, we spent time playing with puzzles, people from different countries and doing activities at the table and on the floor. The people from different countries are made out of wood and their clothes and faces are painted onto the wood. Some of the families that we have are from India, Japan and Egypt. Their clothes are very different from the ones that we see people wearing here in Japan. At the second table in our free play area we had matching bingo cards to play with. We also spent time playing imaginatively, making another picnic and singing while we were playing.

Our special activity today which most of us participated in was, making a sleigh for our gifts that we are going to send to Tohoku for the children’s Christmas Party. Kaitlyn, Alex’s mummy came to make the sleigh with us. Hisami cut out the shape on two boxes and Kaitlyn had the idea for us to make snowflakes and paste them onto the box. We made designs for some of the snowflakes by making small shapes on folded pieces of origami paper. Kaitlyn then cut them out for us. We used our fingers to spread the glue onto the boxes first, so that we could cover them brightly. We think that Santa Claus is going to come to Ohana, to take the presents so that he can deliver them when it is Christmas in Tohoku. We are looking forward to seeing Santa at our school soon.

William L and Vincent worked on dressing their junk art people today. William L chose a fireman and Vincent chose to be a policeman. William L chose to wear yellow clothes with some black stripes and Hisami made a red “kabuto” for the fireman’s helmet. Vincent chose to use blue paper for the clothes and he added in a black belt with handcuffs, a phone and a baton. He also put a huge sparkly badge on his policeman. We will continue to work on them tomorrow as well as our sleigh.

We spoke about hats during one of our circle times. Shelley asked us what we could see, when we looked at her. We told her eyes, eye brows, a mouth, nose, chin, clothes, pants, cheeks and then she asked us whether she could also wear clothes on our head. We thought that this was a silly question because of course you can’t wear clothes on your head. You can wear a hat though! She then asked us who we see in the neighbourhood, wearing a hat. She drew some hats and we tried to guess who they belonged to. We said a policeman, a fireman, a chef, and then there was a cap and a wooly hat. Uniforms tell us very clearly what people do for their work. Sometimes people look the same and we cannot be sure what sort of jobs they do.

William L did his Show and Tell this morning and it was related to our excursion to the Fire Station. He brought a book from his Kumon class, called “Hataraku kuruma 4”. It was all about a fire truck and the different things that fire trucks do. One of them had soap and water in a tank so it squirted out soapy water when there was a fire; there was an ambulance too. He explained to us what each vehicle did and we asked him questions at the very end. Then he called our names individually and told us to go and wash our hands to get ready for lunch time. On Friday we will be going to the glass studio near Step Park as a part of our theme for this month.

Luka chan brought us a gift this morning which was a wonderful surprise. He brought with beautiful “noreng” which his grandmother made for the school, to hang in the kitchen and bathroom. We love the fabric of our one which is red. He also brought a gift of three books in a series called ‘Stella’ as his birthday gift. We read one and loved the imaginative story which reminded us about our own make believe stories and games that we play. Thank you so much Luka chan and Nanako chan and David for the gift. We love them.

Thanks for a great day!

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.