Happy Birthday and Goodbye Karl!

The Buds are ready for a new adventure today. Haruto, Leanne and Dominik gathered the lego blocks and started making a town. Lanah said that she’s making a building for an office; Leanne was showing everyone the construction worker who was trying to build a tower. Haruto and Dominik began putting the road tracks together. Our circle time was fun too! We made a very big circle and all of us were very quiet at first. Until John started strumming his guitar and we all sang “Good morning song, number song and head, shoulders, knees and toes”. It was great to see Sofie, Rei, Haruto and Leanne dancing joyfully around the classroom.

After that, our teachers showed us a very interesting music instrument. It looked like a seashell and it was making a funny tapping sound with its mouth. We use our hands to play this instrument. John said that these are called “castanets”. And we could use this to make different rhythmic patterns. For now, we learned “tap, tap” that means two quarter notes. So, when we sang “If you’re happy and you know it, play with this (showing the castanets)…TAP! TAP!” We did the song for several times until we found the right rhythm. Rei and Kaia were so amazing doing the rhythm patterns. And Leanne was such a great singer for she could really sing the song out loud.

Next, we went to our art tables. And our teachers prepared two sets of art activities for us. We remembered that we painted a box white and our teachers said that this time we have to paint brown patches on it. Kaia was very happy to put her hand on the brown paint. And she always said, “brown, brown, brown!”

On the other table, Rupert, Ritsuka and Haruto were so busy doing their masks. Maki helped them because John and Sayaka were doing the cow art with the other kids. So, Maki taught them the shape of the mask and what colors do the strands of yarn have? We found gold, red, yellow and white. The white yarn was for the sheep mask while the other colors like gold, red and yellow were for the lion’s mane. It was really fun to see and make the masks and we all had an artistic day.

   Karl is one of the first students here in Buds class. We celebrated his birthday today because they are leaving for Germany on Saturday. It was mixed feelings that we felt today. We are so happy for him because he is growing up really fast into a smart and sweet boy. We are also sad for it was also time to say bye-bye to him tomorrow.

Anyway, we celebrated his birthday by giving him the card and crown. He sat on our birthday chair like a little prince while we showed him our cute faces on the birthday card and from his big book portfolio. He recognized all our faces and mentioned our names one by one. It was so nice that Karl knows us very well and we just love how he looked at us with a smile after giving him the gifts. Then, we also played a game for him and it is called, “finding the stingray game”. Since Karl really like the stingray, we decided to play this game with him. Sayaka hid the stingray somewhere inside the classroom and all of us would have to find where it was. We looked around the best we can and…WOW! Karl found it in our jungle painting. Great job Karl!

After our game, we ate wonderful snacks that Karl’s parents made. We had chunks of pineapple and grape on a stick, some sweets and biscuits. We sang a big “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” for Karl and he said thank you!

When we arrived at the park, we saw the Petals class again. We played with them and they shared some tools that they have in the sand pit. Rupert was so happy digging and throwing the sand. Leanne liked to slide and she even asked her teachers to go with her several times.

It was a great day that we had again in Ohana! See you tomorrow!

Lots of love,

John, Sayaka and Maki