The Sun, the Earth and the Moon
Today we had a very exciting day with planets, the moon and the sun models in the class. On the table were lots of Styrofoam balls ready to be painted red or orange and we could choose which we wanted to use. Many of us also painted the reverse side of our ‘Haogoita’ bats. We also needed to remember to paint the sides of them too. They look great and we will start to decorate them tomorrow morning. On the
second table there was a big picture of a planet with rings around it. The planet the teachers told us is called Saturn and the rings are made of ice and rock. We are going to make a mobile with the 
Styrofoam balls and need one with rings. Next to the picture were some card circles which we could decorate to look like the rings of the planet Saturn. We used colored markers and made sure that we colored on both sides. Tomorrow we will make the planet Saturn itself as well as the other planets. On the carpet area we all had a lot of fun playing with the new Duplo blocks which are a bit bigger than the Lego but 
it also has things like cranes and digger attachments. Ayaka showed us how to us the dominoes stacked on their sides and when she pushed 
the first one they all fell down in turn. We tried this ourselves with our friends and although it was difficult it worked really well. After snack and park time Ayaka read us a book in Japanese which she then translated for us. The Junishi no ohanashi’ It was a great book all about how the star sign animals were included and how some were not included. It turns out the mouse in the story lied to the cat and so there is no ‘Cat’ star sign and subsequently cat 
always chase mice. In circle time we broke into two groups: the first group went 
up to the 3rd floor to water the new flowers and bulbs we planted yesterday. We had a big and a small watering can ready and could choose any two of the boxes we wanted to water. The second group made a big circle and sat down. In the center Darren held up a yellow globe which looked just like the sun. We then took turns walking another smaller globe around the circle to represent the earth. We then included the moon which circles the earth 
by having each of us spinning around our friends while moving the earth around the sun in the center. We had to move the earth around really slowly to give our 
friends enough time to get around us too. We now know that it takes the earth 1 year to circle the sun and the earth takes 1 day and 1 night to turn once.
Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Sharee