Who's bigger? Who's smaller?

Today was Gento kun’s first official day at school and he had snack, outdoor play time and lunch with us upstairs. On the third floor, Nico and Finn played with Interstar bricks; they are large bricks a little similar to stickle bricks. Nico built a car and Finn built a small robot. They decided to build a house for the robot and together they selected different pieces and built am amazing house. They wanted a “real” door and window and decided to use the wooden door and window from the wooden block set. Downstairs, Gento kun played with many toys. He loves music and spent a lot of the time dancing, moving his body to the songs and then he experimented with the Claviola. He pushed the button and just like magic, music played on the piano; but no one was playing the piano. He sat on Kana’s lap and enjoyed this experience.

He learnt so much from us when he came upstairs and watched us carefully to see what we were doing, in preparation for snack time. He washed his hands, put his snack bag on top of his place mat and sat down ready to eat his snack. We all sang our snack time song together and then we prepared to go to the park.

At the activity tables, we used crayons and oil pastels on large pieces of paper. We spoke about the people who are in our family; our mums; dad; sisters and brothers. Some of us have extended family living with us at home like our grandmas and grandpas. We have a small wooden mannequin on the shelf in our classroom and we used this as a guide for us to see the different parts on our bodies. Finn drew himself. He made the mannequin have a pose with its hands up and Finn then said: “Yoga”. Then he made it look like it was sitting and he said: “Itadakimasu”.

Gento kun did a drawing as well. He made a picture on a large piece of paper together with Kana. He played with play dough and rolled the play dough and made many shapes with it. We all changed our T-shirts to go to the park and took some toys with as well as another huge shape. The shape that we took to the park today was round. Shelley said that it is called a sphere. The last shape that we took to the park was a cube. We bounced the sphere in the air and pushed it around. Some of us are bigger than the sphere and some of us are smaller. Can you guess who is smaller than the sphere? Can you guess who is bigger than the sphere?

At the end of the day while Nico was resting, Finn did some mazes with Darren. The mazes help us understand directions. When we draw on them there is an arrow that tells us where we have to start and in which direction we need to move. All of our mazes go from left to right as this is the way we learn to read in English. Some of the lines in the maze were straight; some were curved like a wave; some were zig zag and some were like the top of a castle.

Tomorrow is going to be a really busy day with eight children at school. This is the most that we have had this year and we are looking forward to working and playing together with all of our friends.

Love Shelley, Darren and Kanako