Happy Birthday Vincent

Tuesday, February 10^th, 2015 Our second gymnastics class started off in the same way as our first one. We did the same activities and exercises as we did yesterday. We warmed up by pretending that we were different animals e. g. rabbit, frog, bear and crocodile. When we were crocodiles, our sensei stood with his legs apart and we crawled through them. When we were bunnies, bears and frogs, we were too big and too high so we couldn’t fit between his legs; but when we were crocodiles, because we were crawling on the ground, we could fit between his legs.

We do quite a lot of exercises for our abs each week and we think that all of our teachers should participate and get in a half hour of exercise on a Monday and sometimes a Tuesday. We are strengthening our tummy muscles and have a fun time while doing the class. In fact we are developing strength in all of our muscles. You can see from the photos how we concentrate.

We walked on our heels like penguins and then walked on our toes like ninjas. We also walked like a lion, hippo and bird and had to change parts of our bodies so that we looked like these animals. We made our arms look like wings; our faces look like scary lions and our arms opened wide like a hippo’s mouth.

During the morning we sat at the table in the library area and enjoyed reading books there. We also enjoyed playing with our 3D neighbourhood which our teachers placed at the back of our classroom. We really like driving the cars up and down the street that runs through the neighbourhood.

We are trying to complete our pedestrian crossing pictures but have had so many things to do this week. We will finally complete them on Friday (tomorrow and Thursday there is no school) We are planning on talking about traffic lights and the special ones that are at pedestrian crossings. They are not the traditional ones for cars but rather specific for pedestrians with a red person standing still and a green one moving.

Before we went downstairs to Buds Class for snack time, we played a game with our newspaper balls. We each counted 10 balls and kept them in our laps. Before this, we actually squeezed a few of them because they had lost their shape. Then we were ready to play. Once we all had 10 balls, our task was to throw them into the basket which Shelley held above her head. When we had finished throwing our 10 balls into the basket, we collected all of the ones on the floor and put them in. It was almost like playing basketball except our newspaper balls didn’t bounce.

Today we had our first 4 years old birthday! It was Vincent’s birthday and he is four years old. His mum and dad came to celebrate with us at our first lunch birthday party. Because of our extra gymnastics lesson, we were unable to do the birthday before snack time; having it before lunch was really fun. Michaela wanted to know how old he was so we sang “How old are you now?” and Vincent replied that he was four so we sang “He’s four years old now”. Then we spoke about the most significant feeling that people have when it is their birthday and we said that it was happiness. So we stood up and suggested some actions for “When you’re happy and you know it”. We suggested turning around, balancing on one leg, balancing on one leg holding someone’s hand, jumping and then our usual shouting happy birthday, whispering happy birthday and today we also mouthed happy birthday. Then Vincent sat down and William helped him look like a birthday boy by putting his crown on. When it was time to give him his present, Shelley said that should would tell us the initial consonant of the person’s name, and he or she could give him his gift. The only problem was that she chose the sound “M” and there were three children in the class today whose names started with the letter “M”. They were Mika, Manuel and Michaela; so all three of them gave Vincent his gift. Then he very kindly showed us the pictures and decorations that we helped with. His mum had made the most beautiful dessert for us; it was a banana dolphin with grapes, cherries and blueberries. There were eyes on each dolphin; some were sleeping, some were awake, some had long eyelashes and we were delighted to eat all of our fruit up after eating our lunch.

We also sang “Four little candles” using our fingers as pretend candles and then after Vincent blew the candles out, we sang “Happy birthday to you” in English and Japanese. Vincent counted four in English and Japanese and William L counted in French while Liezel counted in Tagalog. We shouted “Hooray” when we had finished singing and then Vincent gave us instructions; the first one was to make our beds and the second one was to wash our hands and please sit at the table. We want to say thank you to Mayuko and John, Vincent’s mum and dad for coming to celebrate with us and also a huge thanks for the fabulous creative dessert.

Enjoy the two days holidays and see you on Friday or next week.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel