Happy birthday Ayaka
Friday, January 23rd, 2015 Today we decided what we wanted to call our neighbourhood.
Miyu: The house neighbourhood
Daiki: The tree neighbourhood
Koh: The driving neighbourhood
Vincent: The hotel neighbourhood
Michaela: Tokyo
William B: England
We all had our own ideas and in the end we thought that Tokyo fitted best so that is the name of our 3D neighbourhood. We have some documentation on the wall in our classroom with photos to explain what we did over the past few weeks, when we were making it. Today Vincent wanted to play with the cars on the street and he decided that he needed to make a traffic light. He told Shelley that he needed to make a square first so she drew dots and he joined the dots; then he drew three circles inside the dots. He explained which colour went where and completed the traffic light and then placed it on the street 
where he thought it belonged. He attached it to a toilet roll and then glued it on.
While Vincent was making his traffic light, we were painting with cotton buds on white paper and in the end we used up all of the paint; so there was nothing left. During free play we dressed up and created a picnic; we went travelling; and Michaela was very serious when she was working in the office. Daiki and Miyu made a track with the trains, so by the time the rest of us had arrived at school, we had everything set up for us.
At the other activity table, we used small white boards and copied our names. We have a special eraser for the white boards and part of the fun, or most of the fun, for some of us, was wiping the marker off the board and then starting again.
We had a special celebration for one of our teachers at Ohana International School. On Sunday it will be Ayaka’s birthday and because we do not have school on Sunday, we chose Friday to celebrate. We 
all went upstairs to Flowers Class and John played the guitar and we sang “Happy Birthday to you”. Darren then asked us lots of questions about what happens when it is a birthday and what do we need to do for Ayaka. Kosei gave her a crown and made her hair nice; Tokutaro changed the calendar so that it read 25th January, which is the real date of her birthday; Koh chan gave our card from Petals Class; Hana chan gave the card from Buds Class and Tokutaro gave the card from Flowers Class. We sang “Happy Birthday to you” 
in Japanese too and then the room went dark. Ayaka’s cake had two candles on it and it looked so beautiful when the cake was on the table, and the lights were off. We counted and then she blew the candles out…..we shouted “hooray, hooray, hooray”.
We think that Ayaka was really happy and she will be happier when her husband, William arrives to celebrate with her, this 
weekend, from China.
Talking about China, we are just about to finish Japanese New Year and Goh san told us that in February it is Chinese New Year. She will come to our class and teach us about China and how people celebrate New Year there.
Hisami read us a really funny book today. It was originally written in Japanese and translated into English. It is called “Everyone Poops”. We laughed because it is all about how animals poop and people poop and the 
different kinds of poops we all make. Animals don’t go to the toilet and some of them don’t even keep still when they are pooping; a deer just keeps on walking while it poops. We don’t think that we could walk and poop because we sit on a toilet. We laughed a lot and saw that there are many shapes and sizes of poops. We think that everyone who reads this book will smile and laugh.
Tomorrow is Open House at our school in the morning from 10am to 12 noon. Our teachers have been preparing so that when visitors come tomorrow, they can see what we have been doing in our classes. Have a great weekend and see you on Monday. Happy Birthday Ayaka!
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel