Happy 3rd birthday Jamie and Welcome Sophie!
We had interesting times in both classrooms this morning. Downstairs our friends were learning about “how to take something without grabbing” and upstairs our friends were learning about letters as they practice how to write their names each day. Today was Jamie’s third birthday so of course we had to prepare a crown for him as he was the king 
for the day. Jamie together with Nico and Finn used gel pens, stickers, crayons and pastels to decorate the crown. On the top of the crown there was a large number three as Jamie turned three today. We also welcomed beautiful Sophie to Ohana for her first day and she had fun decorating a star for Jamie, with Shoko and Miya. At the activity tables, they made their stars and then played with play dough. They used the play dough in their imaginative play and made cookies which they shared with their teachers. They had a cookie party with everyone. We packed away and had our morning circle time where we sang our “Hello” song and some other action songs and rhymes. We read “Brown Bear” and just like our older friends who know the story, we learnt how to say the words; so we helped Shelley read the story too.
At Jamie’s party we all sat together on the floor and he sat on a chair as if he was the king. In fact when we all stood up 
to sing “When you’re happy and you know it” Jamie wanted to stay sitting on the chair. We think that he felt really important when he was sitting on the chair, that’s why he wanted to stay there as long as he could. Finn put his crown on his head to make him look like a king, and this made him feel even more proud. We love it when our friends are celebrating their birthdays as it is a time for us to make them feel more special; we get to eat cake and we love singing “Hooray” loudly and then in a whisper. We gave Jamie his gift which was a chain filled with stars. He invited his friends to come and sit at the table and we all had jungle hats, jungle serviettes and jungle plates. His cake was an ice cream cake with a red car on it. The car looked like it was driving on a white road. We ate the entire cake up and then had small delicious raisin buns. We sang “Happy Birthday to you” in English and in Japanese and we also sang “Three little candles”. Jamie blew the real candles out and we blew our pretend candles out which were our fingers! We want to say a big thank you to Jamie and his family for the special treats that we had today and we hope he has a lovely afternoon.
Finn, Nico and Jamie did a matching letters game upstairs. They had their own names plus many individual letters on the carpet. They had to find their matching letters and also put them in the correct order. They all managed to do this really well. Signing in is a part of their routine every day and they sit at the literacy table and complete this routine once they have unpacked their lunch etc.
Outside in the park we played with new sand and water containers. We have bowls and cake tins and jugs and enjoyed mixing sand and water in them. Jamie took the sand shovel and let it go down the slide and then he slid down afterwards. Often when we are outside, we all play
together which is a lot of fun. Our older friend’s help the younger ones turn the tap on and today Nico was really kind and took responsibility for filling bottles and containers up at the tap.
Love Shelley, Darren and Kanako