Santa Claus came to Ohana International School

What a welcome back for all of us. Guess who came to Ohana International School today? You will never believe us if we tell you that it was SANTA CLAUS! We were busy doing activities this morning and suddenly there was a knock on the door…..and…..in walked Santa saying: “Ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas”. It was like a dream for us! You can imagine our faces when we saw Santa this morning. We were really surprised even though we knew that he was coming. He shook hands with some of us and we gave him hugs. Then he took one of our large sacks which we filled with toys and he disappeared. We looked out of the window and couldn’t see him so we realized that he had gone up to the sky, where he lives. We hope that the presents didn’t get wet along the way and that he will deliver them safely to the children in Minamisanriku-cho for Christmas. We still have some presents in our classroom which some of our mums will pack tomorrow and put inside boxes to send to the children too. Santa couldn’t take them all.

Because it was a rainy day, we stayed inside and did so many different activities. Of course Monday is our gymnastics class with Tanaka sensei and Miyu and Lucinda had their first gymnastics lesson with him today; and they loved it. The class started with a warm up session where we made our bodies like a table; we balanced on our hands with one leg in the air, still trying to make our bodies like a table; then we lifted the other leg into the air; we walked on all fours like a bear and a frog and lastly like a snake, where we slithered along the floor because snakes don’t have legs.

You can see from many of these photos that we were holding partners really close to us. In this game, we first stood in a circle and when Tanaka sensei blew his whistle, we had to try to find a partner and hug them. After we had done this a few times, we had to try to hug them from behind, just like you do when you are making a train. It was really funny and we loved the hugging part.

Today was also quite a funny day because early in the morning Lucinda decided that she wanted to be pregnant and so she put a soft toy baby, underneath her long sleeved top. It made her have a large tummy. Vincent then copied her and so did William L. They carried their babies for most of the morning, even downstairs when we had snack in Buds Class. They started off with the babies in our gymnastics class but soon, realized that it would be easier to do the exercises “san bebe” and they took them out. Koh loves going to the office each day when he comes to school and today, he was fortunate enough to be able to go to the office in a tie. This he wore for most of the morning too. During snack time, our teachers turned it so that it was behind him, so that it didn’t get dirty and at the end of snack time, he couldn’t understand where his tie had gone to; but it only needed to be turned around and he was once again, happy.

We need to tell you something else about today. If you walked inside our classroom, you would have thought that you were in a bakery. And yes, we were a bakery. We baked 100’s of small star cookies for……..shhhhh! Sorry we can’t tell you. We rolled the dough, used star cookie cutters to make the shape and then sprinkled them with chocolate chips and coloured sprinkles and sparkles. Shelley said that Hisami created a cookie factory today. It was like a conveyor belt of cookies. We all worked together as a team and we knew that we were not going to eat them when they were ready because they are for………………….shhhhhh!

We were glad to welcome William back from his vacation in Hawaii and Taiyo is well again so he came back to school too. We want to mention one more thing about today. If you look at the one photograph of Vincent you will see a big smile on his face. He was really excited to see Santa in our class but he had no idea that it was a secret Santa who lives in his house.

This picture of him was taken after Santa had left our class with a bag of presents. It looks like he has a knowing smile, but he thought that Santa was Santa……just like we did.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel