Coins from Around the World

This morning was a very ‘sweet’ morning for the children with many of them giving their friends Valentine’s Day gifts and cards. As soon as the children arrived in the morning they started to search for their friends and give them small gifts each. The teachers received gifts too which made us really happy, thank you to all of you for thinking of us. The children also made some gifts for the mummies and daddies too. They will go home today at pick up time. On the table the playdough was popular with Eito, Noa and Arata. Eito and Noa used the rolling pins and cookie cutters to make coins. Very carefully they put some numbers on the front of their coins. Arata made a cookie with the extrusion tool which when loaded with play-dough pushes out long pieces which look like spaghetti. Arata also finished his special Valentine’s Day card for his mommy with the origami paper, red letter stamps and shape cutters too. On the carpet Marc, Olivia and Alexis wanted to play a game and saw we had put out ‘Twister’ for them. Marc said he was a little unsure how to play it and so Olivia and Ayaka came to help show him. We are still getting used to which is our right and which is our left which made things a little tricky. Olivia then told us all about how today is her daddy’s birthday and how her daddy said he is ‘not flexible’ and Olivia is which means she can play twister well. The dress up corner was very popular also this morning with Alexis, Riko, Noa and Nile all putting on costumes, crowns, tiaras and carrying handbags. They then set up a ‘girls only’ tea party but Marc wanted to join them and they kindly let him play too. We cleared away the toys nicely today and after eating snack we got ready for the park very quickly. Before we left we all looked at a book together about how cities developed over the centuries. The book is titled ‘A street through time’ which starts as far back as 10,000 B.C with a small village next to a river and then each page shows the development of the city through roman times, the industrial revolution and then onto modern times. We headed for the park and our teachers helpers pulled the little trolley loaded with our daffodils and bulbs to be planted in the park flower garden. We all worked together to take out the old plants, dig holes and then plant the new daffodils. We hope they grow big and strong in the sunshine. In circle time we started off by looking at the big world map on the carpet and the teachers asked us “What is different about the countries”? We knew that Australia had lots of different animals and suggested these first: Olivia-Dingo, Alexis-Koala, Adam-Wombat, Nile-Kangaroo, Kosei-Platypus. The teachers then asked us what else may be different when we go to different countries and got the following ideas: Olivia-Motorcycles, Ryan-Cars, Marc-Bicycles, Ethan-Flags & Money, Adam-Clothes, Olivia-Food & Drink, Marc- Christmas trees. We then got to see some of the money from lots of different countries that some of our friends had brought. We had lots and lots of coins and notes. We looked carefully at the notes and discovered that if we held them up to the light we could see a picture of the Queen on the English notes. We used some magnifying glasses to try and see the pictures on the coins and could just make out the numbers on them. Some had 1 on them, others 10, 50 or even 100. The pictures were not so clear and we wanted to clean them. Ryan and Olivia suggested soap and water but it didn’t work. We then got a cup each with our name on it and put a dirty coin into it. We were very surprised to see Darren pull out a bottle of Coca Cola and pour a little into the cup. We soon realized that the Coca Cola will dissolve the dirt and although many of us like Coca Cola we couldn’t drink this. We will; see how the coins look next week; we hope they are nice and shiny!! Have a great weekend and a great Valentine’s Day. We look forward to seeing you next week.