Welcome Alexis

This morning we welcomed Alexis to Flowers Class. She settled really quickly and was soon enjoying her free play time with Lucinda, Noa and Riko. On the table we continued with our Japanese calligraphy. Many of us practiced with water on dark construction paper first to get the hang of it before trying it on the rice paper. We did two pieces, one a long one for display on the wall, the second a smaller one for our special year end portfolio. On the second table we started to put together our wall hanging calligraphy. Jessica, Nile, Noa and Lucinda all chose two pieces of bamboo to attach to the top and the bottom. Together with the teachers we folded the top of the paper over the bamboo, glued it and then taped it so we could hang it. We then did the same with the bottom of the paper and hung them in the classroom. We are so proud of our work. The large train set was also popular this morning on the carpet area. We put together lots of track and got out lots of trains to play with. Eito and Kosei enjoyed playing together making lots of things with the K-Nex construction set. After snack time we went to the park and although it was a bit cold we enjoyed ourselves a lot. Nile and Tokutaro enjoyed playing soccer together while Lucinda and Alexis made sand food in the sand box. Jennifer, Marc and Jeremy dug a big hole and made a mountain with the sand they had removed. When we returned to the classroom we read a book called ‘What’s in the sky’. This book showed us the earth from a long way away and told us about astronauts. The teachers then showed us a small globe with all the countries on it. We answered some questions about what we can see at night and told the teachers how we see stars, sometimes a full moon, sometimes only part of it as well as things like owls. The teachers asked us whether it was day or night now and we said day. When we looked in the book it showed the sun and the earth spinning. We tried an experiment with the globe and using a torch we pointed it at the globe from one side. When we span the earth dome it went dark on the other side just like at night. From the book it said the earth goes around the sun but it takes a whole year to go around just one time. At the start of the New Year in Japan we knew we did shuji and played with spinning tops. The spinning tops we made yesterday we then decorated further to make them all sparkly by adding some red, blue and silver gem stickers. With our friends we moved to the carpet area to try them out and see if they looked nice and flashy. We tried a few times with the spinning tops and some of us have learnt how to wind them and get them spinning already. Have a great afternoon.