Welcome Ritsuka, Colors of the ocean and our Funny Jellyfish

We like to welcome Ritsuka to our Buds class. We think that she is very lovely and can get along pretty well with us. At first, she was a bit shy and she would only like to stay in one corner and play with some toy cars and trucks. But when she saw all her other friends, she instantly bloomed like a beautiful flower, she sometimes played, read a book and even painted with them. When all the Buds were settled in class, Sayaka and Maki called us up one by one to do some designing on our Hagoita. Leanne who was not here yesterday, got her chance to color her hagoita beautifully. During our circle time, the Buds sang the 5 little fishies in the sea and again, we all loved to say “SNAP” when the shark would try to eat the fish. And then, John asked Lanah to get a giant shark toy and he put it on his head. He started singing, “I am the shark, yum, yum. I want to eat, yum, yum and GROOWWLLL!” When the shark would say growl, we had to put our heads down and he would “snap, snap, snap” and eat us-the little fishies. It was a fun game and we definitely got away from the shark. But John said that he can also be a friendly shark and we just needed to be quiet and not to disturb him for the meantime.

After our fun shark game, we went to our art activity table to finish up our ocean painting. Before we started painting, we knew that the ocean was so big and it had some bubbles around it. But we thought that we could put some more colors on our ocean, so we thought that we can paint some seaweeds and corals in it. The green paint was for our seaweeds and the yellow paint was for the corals. Our teachers asked us to pick a special sponge that we could use to stamp on our ocean painting. Everyone was great in getting the paint on our sponges and we all had to be very careful in putting them in our painting. But Karl dipped his sponge and he got really heavy amount of it and then he squished the sponge real hard to get the paint come out. He said, “This is a shark, I like my shark green! And then, Yurika would sometimes giggle and say Karl’s name when she feels amused by his antics. And amazingly, it made great effects. Truly, we’re all creative in many ways!

Rei also loved doing the painting, she got the sponge and managed to dip it in the yellow paint and then she tried to use her other hand to stamp on our painting too. Kaia was very quiet working but she always uttered the colors that she was using for example, “green, and yellow”. Yurika did the same thing, she just always wanted to get her hands on everything she touches but she was very concentrated this time. It was amazing to see that most of our kids can find delight in our art activities.

Sofia was quietly putting the rice in the cups and Yurika was looking at the life book that she has brought from before. Some of us did some jellyfish art, we did not go to the park today so we had to make another artwork to keep our hands busy, it was snowing by the way and we all saw the snow falling from the sky. We learned how to tear the paper gently and halfway through instead of tearing it off all along. Then, we colored our jellyfish and put a pair of eyes on it. It was a very simple art work but we practiced our fine motor skills effectively.

After that, we still have time to sing more songs and dance around with our friends. We also got Hana’s life book and looked at the pictures. John asked us several questions about the book like “What was Hana doing? What was she cooking? What instrument was she playing? And so on.” Everyone was very attentive, especially Lanah because she answered most of the questions correctly. We love looking at this book every now and then.

Thank you so much again for an adventurous day at school. Hope to see you all tomorrow!

Lots of love,

John, Sayaka and Maki