Happy Birthday Ayaka
Today we celebrated Ayaka’s birthday in the classroom with our friends from Buds and Petals classes. A very Happy Birthday Ayaka!! We hope your day and weekend is filled with love, happiness and fun. This morning Adam and Kosei had a few pieces of artwork to catch up on and they came to the table to get started as soon as they arrived. Firstly they needed to make a rocket each. Some of us made our rocket earlier in the week. To make their rockets they chose a piece of origami paper to make the cover for the rocket body and glued it on. Using a semi-circle of paper they
made the nose cone to put on the top and the remaining semi-circle to cover the fins. Several of us today also needed to attach some sparkly pieces to look like the flames coming from the rocket. On the second table we finished painting our art 
clay earth models we made earlier this week with blue and green paint markers. We will glue these to our mobiles in the classroom next week. Also on the table were the cork boards, hammers and nails to make block pictures. This is a good way for us to practice our fine motor skills as we need to put the small nails through the holes in the blocks and then hit them with the little hammers carefully to hold them in place. On the carpet the small cars were very popular and several of us made two lines and pushed the cars back and forwards to each other. We needed to pack away the toys and art activities a 
little early so that we could get ready for the party for Ayaka. We were soon joined by our friends form buds and petals classes and we all sat together on the carpet. We were very lucky that John form buds class brought along his guitar. Kosei gave Ayaka a golden crown which she put on her head and then Marc gave Ayaka the 
cards we had made in flowers class. Our friends in buds class and petals class then gave her the cards they had made for her too. Together we sand Happy Birthday in English and then followed it by singing it in Japanese too. We turned off the lights so that we could present Ayaka with her cake which had some candles on the top for her to blow out and make a wish. We didn’t ask Ayaka how old she will be on Sunday as it is not polite to ask a lady her age but she did say she was “20 again”. Happy Birthday Ayaka, we all love you!! After snack we did our Earthquake practice drill where we pretended there was an 
earthquake and all got under the tables to protect our heads. Goh San also opened 
all the doors and windows so they wouldn’t jam in the earthquake. We then all came back to the carpet area and went through the procedures for a fire. We knew we needed to shout “Fire” as loud as we could, to cover our mouths and walk carefully down the stairs. When we got to the ground floor the teachers checked we were all there and we headed for the park. It was good to be in the park and enjoyed the sunshine. Olivia, Tokutaro, Adam, Ryan and Mark all came to the fenced area to play soccer which was fun. When we returned to the 
classroom Ayaka helped us with our space theme by reviewing all the planets and days of the week in Japanese. It was really fun and we enjoyed repeating the words one by one in Japanese. We are gradually remembering all the names of the planets and finding out about them is so much fun.
Have a great weekend. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako