Happy birthday Hisami
Today was a special day. Something nice came our way….and Hisami’s too. We celebrated her birthday with all of the children in the school. Buds and Flowers classes came to our class and there were soooo many children all together in one room. We sang “When you’re happy and you know it”; “How old are you now”; “Hisami is …..years old today”; “Happy birthday to you” in English and Japanese and we counted all the way up to 21. We are not sure if Hisami is really 21 
but this is what she told us. She wore a beautiful golden crown with jewels on it and we gave her a card and so too did the children from Buds and Petals classes. We hope that she will celebrate on her real birthday which is next week on December 16th and have another 
party.
We had a few activities at the tables this morning which included puzzles and drawing. We had to pack up really early for the party so afterwards we did some activities with our teachers as well. We needed to have activities that were easy to pack up.
We also had something new to play with on the floor, which was connected to Channukah. Yesterday we learnt that children get presents every day on 
Channukah but they also play with spinning tops. The spinning tops have a Hebrew letter on each side and there is a special game that you play with them. We played with many different spinning tops during the morning and noticed how some of them spun for longer than others.
When we spun them, the patterns that are on them, changed. After 
the party, we went to the tables and did some more activites. We had two 100 piece puzzles, hammering on the cork boards and drawing and cutting. Some of us like to cut paper into tiny little pieces and then we want to take the pieces home with us. Giorgia put hers into an envelope that her teachers made for her.
Alexis and Miyu worked at the office table together. In our music lesson, we sang BINGO and clapped our hands. We played another tune with musical notation. There was one crotchet and a rest sign and then another crotchet and a rest sign. The rhythm is clap rest, clap rest……we played this rhythm using colourful castanets. We also played the same rhythm and sang ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’.
We sang BINGO and clapped when it was the B, I, N and G and when 
we saw the O, we didn’t clap. We looked carefully at the hands on the different letters and copied them. We sang some songs in Japanese too e. g. “Obento, obento ureishi na”; “Hige-jiisan”; “Kobuta, tanuki, kitsune, nekko” and the clap hands song. We played a game where we had to freeze when the music stopped. The music that we moved around the room to was all Christmas songs. The songs were “Jingle Bells”; “Awaten bou no Santa Claus” and “Rudolf the Red Nosed 
Reindeer”.
Our story today was called “Sammy’s Spiders First Channukah”. Sammy Spider was really excited to have the candles burning as he had cold feet and the heat from the flames warmed them. His mum warned him not to go too close as he could burn himself. Then Sammy observed Josh, the little boy, getting a different coloured spinning top, each night of Channukah. He asked his mum if he could get a spinning top but she said: “Spiders don’t spin spinning tops, they only
spin webs”. This did not satisfy Sammy Spider, but things didn’t change. Then on the last night of Channukah he did get a present from his mum; it was eight socks so that his feet would stay warm, without the flames of the candles. He was excited and put them on straight away and then he spun around as if he was a spinning top.
Tomorrow is our last day of school for 2014 and we are looking forward to a fun short day, with a farewell party for Lilian.
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel