Happy 4th Birthday Marc
Today we celebrated Marc’s 4th birthday with a party. A big Congratulations Marc, we wish you all the best! The rain again meant we couldn’t go to the park this morning but we had a good time inside the classroom together. On the table this morning we saw that our paper clay Earth models we made had dried and were ready to be colored. We knew that the earth from space looks mostly blue and green 
and so we used blue and green paint markers to make them look like earth. On the big table Ayaka helped us make rockets. To make the rockets we firstly chose a cardboard tube for the main body of the rocket. 
We then chose a piece of colored origami paper and using our fingers we put some glue along the edge and rolled the tube so that the origami paper stuck all the way around it. In a tray there were also lots of foam stickers which we could stick on the body of the rocket to look like windows, doors etc. Next we took a circle of colored paper to make the nose cone of the rocket. We folded the circle in half and then cut along the 
fold line. Using some glue we were able to roll the paper into a cone shape and stick it along the edge to hold it in shape. We added some stripes to the body of the rocket using some shiny craft tape and then started to make the fins 
for the rocket. We still had half a circle from the nose cone and so we folded this in half and again cut along the fold line so that we had a quarter. Using the quarter of paper we folded it over two triangles of cardboard and using the extra paper we were able to stick it them to the main body of the rocket. The last thing we needed to do was to attach the nose cone with glue and then add some blue or green sparkly streamers for the rocket flames. This was easy and we used just a piece of tape. Also on the 
table Sharee showed us how to play a new game where we had to choose a card and keep it a secret from our friends. On the board there was a big picture and the card showed just one of the things in the picture. We needed to ask questions to find out 
what the card showed. It took us a little while to learn to play this but we did a good job. We needed to pack away a little bit early so that we could be ready for Marc’s birthday party. Soon Marc’s parents Oren and Mariana arrived and we all listened carefully as they read a book called ‘Planes’ to us. It was a great story and one of Marc’s favorites. After the book we all sang Happy birthday to Marc in English and in Japanese. Oren then told us how to say “Happy Birthday” in Russian- “Sdniom rozchdeniya”. He also sang a beautiful Happy Birthday song in Russian to us which told a special story. We then gave Marc his wonderful crown and card which we made for him. We all sang together “If youre happy and you know it” before we moved to the table to have some wonderful birthday donut treats. Thank you so much Oren and Mariana, they were delicious. Congratulations Marc!! After the 
birthday party Ayaka read a book to us and then we wanted to see the special ‘Solar System’ board that Lucinda brought to school. This is an electronic board which has pictures of all the planets and the sun on it. When you choose a planet and press the button it tells us all about that planet. It was really good and we all wanted to try it. Lucinda decided who would be next so that we could all share nicely. In circle time we talked all about the things we would need to take if we went to our nearest neighboring planet Mars. It would take us a long time to get there and so we thought about what to take. We thought of: food, water, toothbrush, hairbrush, toothpaste, shoes, helmet, 
space suit, toilet paper, clothes and backpack. Some really good ideas! We then moved to the table to draw the sun and the eight planets on some white paper. It was great as we had to draw some of the planets with rings and checked on the poster to see the right colors for each of them. We used colored pencils and wax pastels to color the pictures to make them look really nice too.
Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Sharee