Grandpa John comes to visit and gymnastics class begins

Today we had a gymnastics class with Tanaka sensei. This is not a part of our usual Thursday schedule but we have some lessons to make up, so we had one class today. Tanaka sensei is always so polite when he comes to our school. He arrives early, dressed smartly in a suit and after he has changed into his gymnastics clothes, he comes to each class and says hello and we have a little chat with him. When it is our turn, we are all excited to have his class and play fun games using our bodies. We played some new games today and some old ones too. We did our usual warm up listening carefully to Tanaka sensei’s instructions. We put our hands out to the side, jumped, bent our knees; then we did the bunny walk, the bear walk, the frog walk and the crocodile walk. We were reminded of the different positions that we make with our bodies e. g. the table, taiso suwari which is when we sit with our knees bent close to our bodies and our hands wrapped around our knees. Then we walked around the room and waited for the whistle to blow. When we heard the whistle, these were the different things that we had to do viz. find a partner and touch hands to hands; knees to knees; tummy to tummy; forehead to forehead and cheek to cheek. You can see what we did in some of the photos. Then we slid around the room on our bottoms and when we heard the whistle blow, we had to touch a colour in the room. The names of the colours were said in Japanese so we had to remember what they were in Japanese. We touched something white, yellow, red and pink. The last thing that we did was run around the room and when the whistle blew we made a train; first with all of our friends; then with two friends and then with three friends.

It was a fun filled gymnastics class today and a great start to the term with Tanaka sensei.

Today we welcomed Vincent’s grandfather from Colorado, to school. He came to show us something that he brought all the way from America. It was a rock that came from Vincent’s Aunty in Utah. It looked just like an ordinary rock and was a yellowish colour on the outside. John, that is Vincent’s grandfather’s name, laid a cloth down on the carpet and he put the rock inside the cloth. What was he going to do? He wanted to break the rock open so that we could see what was inside. What could there be inside? He told us that thousands of years ago, a small animal burrowed inside the rock and since the rock is porous, and water can go through the outer layer, it changed the inside of the rock where the hole was.

When we had managed to break the rock open, we saw what had happened over so many years……crystals had formed. We loved their sparkle and wanted to keep one for ourselves. Luckily John said that we can all have a piece of the rock with the crystals; so each of us has a piece inside our school bag to take home.

We sang our good morning song and John sang his name back to us; and so did Mayuko, Vincent’s mum. Charlie also came to the lesson and he was able to sit for a short time with us. After the lesson with John, about rocks and crystals, we went back to our classroom and did Taiyo’s Show and Tell. When we do gymnastics, Buds Class use our room, so we swopped rooms to do our lesson on rocks and crystals.

For Show and Tell, Taiyo brought along a picture of his new baby sister, Sola and then he showed us a video of himself, singing with a microphone at home. He enjoyed watching himself singing and we enjoyed watching him singing too. He brought along the microphone that he sang with, in the video.

Hisami changed the calendar with us and again we are trying to recognize the initial sounds and letters. Windy starts with “w” and so does “Wednesday”. Sunny starts with “s” and Sunday does too. Because our schedule was slightly different today, we stayed inside the classroom and did some art activities before lunch. At one table we did marble painting using white paper, with gold, red, pink and silver paint. These colours remind us of “Shogatsu”. We used a box and inside the box was a piece of paper. We rolled the marbles up and down as well as left and right on the page and made interesting patterns. We could use the marbles and colours over and over. At the second activity table, we decorated our spinning tops using Posca’s. We also pasted some beautiful pieces of origami right at the end and we are looking forward to seeing them spinning round and round. We are wondering what the paper will look like when the top is spinning.

We also helped paint our planter boxes which are going to go up to the discovery area upstairs on the third floor. We will hang them on the lattice and then plant some seeds. Our responsibility will be to take care of them and ensure that they are fed and grow.

It was another fabulous, full day at school.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel