Visiting the Glass Studio

Our gifts will soon be on their way

Santa will take them for us.

We are wondering how he will get there,

Perhaps he will take a bus.

Please send our gifts to school,

As quickly as can be

We don’t want to miss out,

On everyone’s generosity.

Xmas time is a special time for all of us too

Giving with a great big heart is wonderful for us to do!

We made another part for our sleigh because it is so full. We will take a photo when it is loaded up with gifts and we think that we may not even be able to see the sleigh when this happens. In fact, this morning all of the children in Flowers and Petals classes played together. When we arrived at school we were surprised to see some Flowers class children with us. Their teachers had a meeting so they joined us for free play. It was a very productive time of day and it felt like our class was so full of energy and excitement. We had drawing activities together with our regular office; we had sleigh making; we had a number game with ice blocks; we had a very difficult Superhero’s puzzle; we had animal shaped puzzles and we made a card for the “recycle business” that we visited yesterday. Whenever we visit someone, we show our appreciation and gratitude by making a card and sending it to them. Hasegawa san was so happy when she received our cards and she sent a lovely email to the school to tell us. Yesterday we made a card for Nanako’s mum as she made some more exquisite “norengs” for us; so today we finished the card for the “recycle business” across the road. We drew some pictures of things that we remembered we saw and while we were resting Hisami took the card to them. When she gave it to them, they were so happy and had big smiles on their faces. They said that we are welcome any time. We think that we brightened up their day when we visited them.

When our card and the extra sleigh were completed, we all tidied up and prepared for a short morning circle together. Our circle focused on numeracy today. We sang ‘Let’s all hold hands in a circle’ and then we sat down together and went all around the room counting the number of children in the class. Shelley took her “pointer finger” which is a stick with a pointer finger on the end. We can all make our own pointer finger with our hands too. She went all around the room, tapping on our heads as we counted all the way up to…….27. That was the biggest number of children we had ever counted in one class. Then we looked at our friends and decided to continue counting further but this time we divided ourselves into two group; one was boys and one was girls. Hisami and Shelley sang, “If you are a girl, stand up” so all of the girls stood up and we counted 13. Ava wrote 13 on the chalkboard. Then we all sang “If you are a boy, stand up” and we counted 14. Ethan wrote 14 on the board. We knew that 13 is smaller than 14 but we couldn’t really work out by how many so……..we marked off the girls as circles and the boys as triangles and grouped them until the very end when we saw that there was one triangle remaining. So there was one more boy! Do you think that this was the end of our game? Oh, no, you are mistaken! We then divided into four groups. One group that had stripes on their clothes; one group that had letters of the alphabet on their clothes; one group that was wearing pink and the fourth group were wearing white. The largest group this time was the one with

letters of the alphabet on their clothes and the smallest group was the one that was wearing white. It was a fantastic early part to the day when we were able to experience large group learning, together with our Flowers friends. Thanks for coming to our class Flowers friends! When we were back to just having Petals in our classroom, we sat together and did “Show and Tell” with Giorgia showing us what she brought to school. She brought with her two fabulous books. One of them was in Italian and had pop up pictures that made everything come alive in the book and the other one was about “Art” and it had some famous paintings in it as well as flaps, things that moved etc. It spoke all about art and the different kinds of art that people make; how you make designs and we also noticed that one of the designs is similar to the one that we made on our paper plates when we put them in the salad spinner.

The latter part of our day was going to visit someone in our neighbourhood. Did you know that there is a Glass Studio near Step Park. Well, this is where we went. We sang “The glass man is a person in the neighbourhood, that we meet on the street each day”. Hisami arranged for us to go there on our way back from the park. When we walked inside, there were some ladies having a class and they were very happy to see us, showing an interest in what they are doing. The man who owns the Glass Studio’s name is “Karino” san. He explained how you take sand from a sandbox or even from the beach, and you put it into a special machine which is like an enormous oven. When you take it out, the sand has turned into glass. We couldn’t believe it. Then he also told us that you can add colours and make glass any colour that you want e. g. you add cobalt to make it blue.

If you want to make a vase or other object, you first use clay and make the design; then you make a mould and the last thing you do is pour the glass which you make into liquid, into the mould. One of the ladies was making a design which you can see here in this photo. The other photo is of some things that other people had previously made. He also showed us a real “pepper” and then he did magic and asked us to close our eyes. Then he said “Open” and we looked and the pepper was made out of glass. He also showed us a small child’s foot, that was made out of glass and a green beautiful smooth ball, which was made out of the sand from Step Park. We are so lucky to have so many interesting people working in our neighbourhood, that we can visit and learn from.

Have a great long weekend everyone! See you on Wednesday.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.