Light and colour
Tuesday, January 20th, 2015 Today we counted nine children but only two teachers. We were sorry to hear that Liezel was sick and we hope that she is feeling better and will be back at school tomorrow.
We had our second gymnastics class this week and did a few different things 
from the class yesterday. Tanaka sensei is really good at keeping us interested in his lessons. He knows the games that we love to play and every week he adds a little twist to them; to make us think a bit more. For our warm up today we put our hands on top of our heads, as if they 
were rabbit ears and jumped around like bunnies; we then jumped around like frogs which is not the same as rabbit jumping. If you are a frog, you need to jump and then bend your knees and touch the ground and then go up again. After being frogs, we were giraffes with our hands raised high above our heads and we walked straight and tall as if we were giraffes. Tanaka sensei demonstrated what he wanted us to 
do next. He blew the whistle in short bursts and ran around the room, then he gave one long blow of the whistle and we had to find a partner and do a “High 10”. Usually we do a “High 5” but today we touched with both of our hands. You can see from the one photo here that we are quite good at balancing on one leg.
We made ourselves look like another animal and this time, we were penguins. You may wonder, how we can make ourselves look like penguins? Well, we put our heels together and waddled around the room; and the last animal that we mimicked, was a crocodile. In Japanese it is called a “wahnee”. We lay on our tummies on the floor and slid around trying to keep our arms together as if they were 
the mouth of the crocodile. At the end of most of our games, we sit on the floor with our knees bent and our arms around our knees. This is called “taiso’u suwari”.
We then did slow walking as the whistle blew slowly and as soon as the whistle blew faster, we started running. 
We ran around the room and when Tanaka sensei said “kani”, which means crab in English, we walked sideways and made our fingers like pincers, moving them open and closed. Sometimes, he shouted “liyon” and then we roared and made ourselves look scary.
For the “mocha game”, we jumped all around the room, and when we heard the whistle, we looked for a friend and turned around so that our bottoms were touching one another. We did this a few times and each time we were given a new instruction. The second time, we had to touch hands; then touch foreheads and the last one was touch cheeks.
The final game of our lesson was with our circular cushions. We rolled the 
cushions around on the floor and when the whistle blew, we had to put our cushion down flat and sit on it. Tanaka sensei put a little bit of pressure on us right at the end, when he told us that we have to sit down on the cushions within 3 seconds. Phew! We managed to do it.
The rest of the day was spent doing activities, listening to story, watching Show and Tell and playing on the mat. We didn’t tell you about our visit to a place at Ohana that we have never been to but you will have to wait a little longer.
At the activity tables, some of us made more people to go on our 3D neighbourhood which our teachers cut out and we pasted onto some hard cardboard. We placed them in the neighbourhood and tomorrow will think about what else we would like to make for it and what name we want to give it.
The second activity was making some decorations for the birthday card that 
we are making well in advance for Vincent’s birthday next month. Together with this, William L, Michaela, Taiyo and Mika did their cutting and pasting activity which we have added to our workbooks/portfolios. We have a few new art works in our books which are filling up.
We had to pack away early this morning so that we could get our classroom ready for Buds and their gymnastics lesson so later in the day, we had the opportunity to play on the mat and build a train track and enjoy some time to dress up and play.
During our morning circle time, we chose the day of the week, the date and the weather for today. We don’t need to sing our “There are seven days in a week song” to work out which day it is as many of us know them in order already. We did sing the song though because we looked at 
flashcards with the days of the week written on them and went through them, counting them and pointing to them as we sang the song. We then decided to go and do and see something that we have not yet seen at Ohana International School; we went to the 3rd floor.
We went together in the elevator and pushed three to go all the way to the top. When we got there we saw Maryna sitting in the warm sunshine working and we kept on walking and went outside. We saw plants growing in boxes and fed them with the watering can. We saw a river made from white stones, pieces of bark from a tree and black smooth stones; we saw hanging chimes made out of bamboo which we played; we saw colours on the ground and on our friends bodies and their clothes and we saw the 
water/sand trough which is usually on our balcony.
Can you see the colours on our clothes? We saw that there were some colourful transparent sheets of paper on the one part of lattice and with the sun shining through it made everything change colour. When we put our faces there, our faces became colourful; when we put our clothes there, our clothes changed colour etc. You can see from the photos that we had a lot of fun.
We loved playing with the light and colours as well as the shadows.
We enjoyed seeing the photo album that Daiki brought to school for his Show and Tell. The photos were all about Shichigosan when Daiki, his brother Kosei, his dad and his mum, all dressed up for the special day. His grandma helped him dress in a beautiful "yukata". Thank you Daiki for your beautiful Show and Tell.
We also had fun with the dress ups as you can see from the one photo here. Dressing up is a very important part of our day together with imaginative play. Elsa is often in our classroom together with Anna lately.
Thanks for a fun day and we are glad that Taiyo is back and Liezel will be back tomorrow.
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel