Welcome Back Olivia and Flower planting

Today we welcomed Olivia back to school in Flowers Class. She looked so happy to be back and was very excited to be with her friends. She came into the classroom with a big smile on her face and immediately said a big “Hello” to the teachers and her friends. Welcome back Olivia, it is great to have you back with us! Olivia started the morning working with Ayaka on her New Year calligraphy. She, like her friends practiced making the hiragana and kanji with water on the washi paper before using the dark black ink. On the main table there were two painting activities, the first involved us painting the second side of our ‘hagoita’ bats which we started painting last week. We used the same color as before and also tried to paint the sides too. We will add more decoration this week to these. The second painting activity was a little different. We had some Styrofoam balls which we are going to use to make a ‘planets’ mobile. The Styrofoam ball is going to be our sun in the center of the mobile. We had some different ideas about the colour of the sun, some of us said it is yellow, others, orange and so we got to choose which color we wanted to paint our sun for the mobile, yellow or orange. The Styrofoam balls all had small toothpicks in them so that we could hold them while we painted them. When we finished painting them we stuck the toothpick into some hard play-dough so they could dry. After packing away the toys and eating snack we were lucky to have Nanako read a great book to us called ‘How to catch a star’ which is all about a boy who wanted to catch his very own star to spend time and play with. The park was a little chilly but it was nice to be out in the fresh air in the sunshine. Lucinda and Alexis were both making food in the sandbox while Jennifer and Olivia dag a big hole in search of treasure. Afterwards they made a sand ‘Happy Birthday Cake’ for Ayaka and sang Happy Birthday together. When we got back from the park we looked at a small book titled ‘The Sun and Moon’ which showed us how the sun rises higher in the sky in summer while it only rises a little in the winter. The teachers then asked us if we need the sun, Jennifer and Tokutaro immediately said “No”. The teachers then asked us about our favorite kinds of food and Tokutaro said “Soba”. Alexis said “Ice cream” and Marc said “Chicken”. When the teachers asked us where these things come from or from what they are made we soon discovered that cows need to eat grass and without the sun, the grass won’t grow. Chickens eat corn and this also needs sunlight to grow. Wow!! We then moved to the table to plant some things that need sunshine too….flowers. We had lots of bulbs to plant and we started off by putting some stones in the bottom of a pot. We then added soil until it nearly reached the top. We then looked at some bulbs and noticed the roots on the bottom of each bulb. We made a hole in the soil and carefully put the bulb into the hole and covered the roots with some more soil. We got to plant two bulbs each and then took them upstairs to the new outdoor space to put them into the boxes on the wall. It was a bit chilly outside and so we only stayed a few minutes before coming back inside for lunch. We shall try and water the flowers a little tomorrow morning with our friends. Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako