Gymastics class with Tanaka sensei

This morning it was soooooo cold on our way to school and when we arrived at school, it was only when we actually went inside the classroom, that we stayed warm. We were snug like a bug in a rug the entire day, except when we went outside to the park. We dressed warmly but all the parts of us that were exposed, could feel the chill in the air. We were glad to return to school and enjoy the warmth of the classroom. We started off our day with imaginative games on the mat, in our free play time and as has been our ritual lately, we lay down and scarf which becomes our picnic mat; we then spread the entire mat with food and we sit with our friends and have conversations with them. At the activity tables, some of us made our Santa Claus origami art work and we also had a free drawing, cutting, pasting with colourful papers. Our teachers think that we sometimes need motivation or what “Reggio Emilia” calls, a provocation, to bring us to a table or to do an activity. We are wondering what provocation that will use tomorrow. We do like cutting so you will see quite a few photos of us cutting up paper in our journals. At the third activity area, we had hammering and we are now starting to create more specific shapes whereas before, we just hammered the shapes in the cork. We have seen from our friends that you can actually make something with the shapes; and there is a large selection of them so you can almost make anything that you want to.

We have become a lot more interested in letters lately and are trying to write our own names on our drawings etc. We use our flashcards and copy our names from them.

Tanaka sensei seemed to have a cold this morning but he told our teachers that he thinks it may be allergies. It sounded like he had a blocked nose; just like when we pinch our noses and speak. That’s what he sounded like. We did our regular warm up exercises which included walking like a bunny rabbit, a bear, a frog and a crocodile. Then we used the small beanbags again and firstly, we had to raise our arms really straight above our heads and then drop the beanbag to the floor. We had to angle our arms carefully so that the beanbag didn’t hit us on our heads. Then we stood in front of the wall, a fair distance away from it and threw our beanbag to see if we could hit the opposite wall. The last game that we played with the beanbags was teaming up with a partner and throwing the beanbag to our friend who had to try to catch it; and when they threw the beanbag to us, we tried to catch it. We did spend some time, picking the beanbags up from the floor.

We played the crow game right at the very end. It is a funny game and we laugh a lot when we play it. We move around the room and when we hear the whistle, we know that the crow is going to come and try to bite our bottoms so, what must we do? We have to find a partner and stand back to back with them so that the crow cannot even see our bottoms. Phew, it was also a little bit stressful for some of us because we really didn’t want the crow to bite us but getting into a back to back position with our friends, was pretty challenging. We needed our teacher’s assistance for this. We played another game with Shelley when we came back from the park. We took a ball and tried to hold it between our chin and our chest; between our ear and our shoulder; hold it between our two feet and then balance it on our heads. We laughed a lot in this game. Then we did the calendar and are remembering our initial sounds really well. We know that Wednesday starts with “w” which is the same as William B and William L’s first letters; Monday starts with “m” which is the first letter of Michaela, Mika and Miyu’s names and then we know what the weather is, because we were in the park and we also know that eight follows seven. We forgot to put in the calendar that we are doing Channukah on Wednesday and cooking “potato latkes”……yummmm!

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel