The Moon and Stars

We had another fun day today and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine in the park. We were very sporty and many of us played soccer in the park. Nanako got very excited and played on the girls team along with Lucinda, Jessica and Olivia. We are not sure who won the game as there were so many goals. In the classroom in the morning Nile, Eito, Riko, Lucinda, Tokutaro and Mark all helped the teachers cut some big pieces of bamboo with a saw. It was quite new bamboo and was still green on the outside. The bamboo will be joined together to make a kind of xylophone for outside on the 3^rd floor. All of the pieces were cut to different lengths to make different sounds when we hit them with a small hammer. On the same table Arata completed painting his Hagoita bat bright red on the back and sides. It should be dry enough to decorate in the morning. On the second table we started to make the planet Saturn for our mobile. To make the planet Saturn we had already prepared the rings from card yesterday and just needed to make the planet itself. To make the planet we used some paper clay which we pushed into a semi-spherical mould. When we took the art clay out of the mould it was the right shape. Once it dries we will begin attaching the two halves onto the rings. In the play kitchen it was great to see Riko, Nile, Olivia, Lucinda and Alexis playing on the carpet as if they were on a picnic. There was lots of food around as well as plates, cups etc. On the main carpet the play mat and toy cars were very popular this morning with many of us and we also had a good time building vehicles with the Duplo blocks. After packing away and eating snack we went to the park which was nice and warm. We were soon joined by our friends from Petals and Buds class and were surprisingly warm. When we came back from the classroom we sang our ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ song and wondered why stars twinkle at night. The teachers told us that all the stars are actually other suns but are so far away that they look very small. Eito kindly took our model sun ball all the way to the door and surprisingly it did look smaller further away. Together we then looked at a book called ‘The Stars’. We know it is the year of the sheep and in the book we saw some other star signs like the two bears and the hunter & his dog. We also saw how sometimes we can only see part of the moon and not all of it, sometimes we can see exactly half. In the night sky we can see stars, some planets and the moon and so we started a picture on black paper using chalk. First we wrote our names on the back of the picture and started drawing the moon first. We than added lots of stars by tapping the chalk on the paper lots of times. We used white, yellow, red and blue to make our stars and moon picture. Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako