Santa came to visit us !!

We had a wonderful surprise this morning; Santa Claus came to visit us in the classroom to collect all the presents we have been collecting for our friends in Tohoku. We had all the presents ready on the table with a huge white sack to put them in ready for him when he arrived. Soon we heard a big knock on the door and when we said “Come in” he was really at the school. He told us how he had travelled down from the North Pole in his sleigh to collect all the presents and said a big “Ho, Ho, Ho” to all of us. He then very kindly shook hands with all of us and one at a time we put the presents in his big white sack ready for him to take. We said a big bye-bye to Santa and he then moved to petals and buds class downstairs before heading off on his sleigh to deliver the presents. Thank you Santa, it was a wonderful surprise to see you today and hope you come and visit all of us again very soon. On the table next to the presents we continued with our special secret gifts for the holidays. Some of us today used the gold and silver paint on card tubes. We then used some wonderful gold or silver yarn to decorate the tubes. To do this we first needed to choose either the gold or the silver yarn and peg one end to the tube. We then turned the tube to roll the yarn around the outside. When we reached the end we pegged the other end of the tube and used some white glue to hold the yarn in place. We will continue with our decoration tomorrow. Also on the main table we started to put together our wooden plant boxes. We drilled and cut the pieces last week with tools and so today it was time to glue the pieces together. We started off by putting the glue all around the base and then adding one side at a time. When we had finished gluing all the sides, we used elastic bands to hold the sides in place correctly. They look really good and we will waterproof them over the next few weeks. On the carpet Ava and Jennifer built a big wooden castle with the wooden blocks and then dressed up in princess uniforms together. We looked so cute in our castle with the outfits! Soon it was time for our weekly fitness class with Tanaka Sensei. We all warmed up together like we usually do by jumping, balancing and stretching our bodies. We counted in Japanese too! We used some bean bags today and had to stand up on our toes and then drop them before picking them up again. It was then time to play a game where we had to find a partner before our friends. We needed to hold out our arms and our partners would get a big hug from behind. It was lots of fun. In circle time we all started off by talking about our new theme for this month ‘Colour, Shape and Pattern’. We each thought of a colour and soon we had a big list of colours together including: Gold, Grey, Silver, Aqua, Brown, Blue, Black, Pink, Green, Orange, Purple, White, Red and Yellow. Ava and Jennifer then mentioned dark and light to add to colours. We then had the chance to look at a picture which was only showing the colour yellow. It was quite hard to see what the picture was. When we looked at the red and blue picture it became a little easier. The black and white one was easy. With the blue and yellow picture mixed we could get green. The surprise was that when we put all the colors together we found the whole picture with all the colors. Finally we needed to see what colours Darren had in the box. We all laughed and started singing our ‘Show and Tell’ song. Inside the box there were lots of colored objects which we use to decorate the classroom. Some tinsel, some beads and even a tree. We will begin to decorate the classroom tomorrow morning with the teachers. Have a great afternoon.