First week Friday
It was a really hot morning when we went to the park but it cooled down later so we tried not to use the air conditioning for the rest of the day. It was cool in the classroom when we came back from the park, which was good. We spent a fun time in the park, digging in the sand box and putting sand in containers. We took the containers to the shady place where we play underneath the cherry blossom tree and emptied the containers onto the small stones which are now the surface in the park. We covered some of the containers with sand and small stones and hid them. It 
looked like there was a small bump on the ground and when our friends looked, sometimes there was something underneath and sometimes there was nothing. This was our trick! We mixed water with the sand in some of the containers and then poured the mixture out onto the ground. By the time we had to pack away, the sun had dried the water on the toys and we didn’t have to wash all of them.
We had snack time in the park as well and are trying to remember that we take our shoes off before we go on the mat! When we were on summer vacation we kept our shoes on all the time; when we were inside and outside we wore shoes so this is something that we have to try to remember being back in Japan. We always take our shoes off when we go inside a house our building or when we stand on a mat.
We had circle time in the library and sang our “Hello” song and “I’m looking to see who is winking their eyes……….” When we were finished Finn was ready for us to sing our other songs, however Shelley said that today we were going to 
do something different. We have certain things that we do every day and are part of our routine while there are some things that we do most days but not every day.
We made drawings for Ashling’s party on Monday and we had a discussion about birthdays which has been documented and is on our notice board on the 3rd floor. We spoke about what we think happens when there is a birthday. We also read a story about birthdays by Dr. Seuss. Please read what we said when you go upstairs. We will have these conversations inside our Portfolios/Workbooks which we will take home at the end of the year. Kana continued the theme of birthdays when we did music this morning. She played the tune “Happy Birthday to you” and we sang to the piano. Then she took out instruments and hid them under her “magic carpet”. She played them and we had to guess what they were. Then we chose instruments and played them while we sang with the piano. We also played a game where we had to be different animals and each time she showed us her special finger, she changed us into another animal. She said that she was a witch and had special powers. We were mice, butterflies, elephants, snails, dolphins, lizards, foxes and dogs.
This was a great start to our first week at Ohana International School for the new school year. We are looking forward to welcoming our friends next week and the following week for their turn to have fun and learn with us.
Wishing everyone a great weekend and see you on Monday.
Love Shelley, Darren, Kanako and Sabine