Playing with our Friends in Petal Class

Today we had a very special morning with all our friends in petals class on the first floor. We usually go into our ‘Flowers’ classroom on the second floor but today we dropped our things off in the classroom and then headed straight to Shelley’s ‘Petals Class’. We had a lot of fun making decorations for our school sleigh to take the Christmas presents to the children in Tohoku. It is beginning to look fantastic and very Christmas likeWe made some snowflakes and had a great time because all the toys were new to us. There were some fun wooden puzzles we had never seen before as well as some great ice cream cone toys too. We helped make a beautiful card for Nanako’s mother who helped the school by making some beautiful ‘Noren’ (curtains) for the class kitchens and bathrooms. Ethan, Ryan, Kosei and Eito all found some new magnetic toys which fit together to make 3 dimensional shapes and were able to play with those on the carpet area. As soon as we returned to the classroom it was time for our snack and to get ready for the park. We took along some sand toys and had fun digging in the sandbox together with our friends from petals and buds classes. The flower garden looks really pretty and so Michaela (Petals Class) and Ava were soon looking for petals which have fallen from the bushes and flowers. They found lots of pink leaves from the flowers on the bushes next to the flower garden and then when we looked closely we saw there were some sparkly white and red petals on the ground next to our flowers. We will be planting some winter flowers in December to replace those that have died recently. There was a lot of wet sand on the fround in the park which we of course love to stick our hands in and then had to pull up our sleeves to wash our hands. When we came back to the classroom it was nearly lunchtime but we had a short circle time firstly reviewing how we can use manner words like “Excuse me”, “Thank you”, “You’re welcome” and “It’s okay”. We then looked at some of the transport cards and saw that if we wanted to draw a circle it is very difficult to draw a nice circle. We noticed how there were things around the classroom such as rolls of tape that we could use to draw around to get better circles. We then moved to the tables to do our own ‘transport’ pictures. We started off by using regular pencils because if we made a mistake we could then use an eraser to correct it. We also realized that if we drew just one small vehicle that we had a lot of ‘spare’ paper which was not being used and so we decided to draw other vehicles such as airplanes in the sky as well as clouds, the sun and grass on the ground. We will continue with these drawings next week. Some of us today completed our hot air balloons by taping pictures of ourselves into the baskets of each balloon. They look really good and we can take them home today. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako