indoor Tuesday and Welcome to New Zealand

It was a bit rainy Tuesday but that didn’t stop the Buds to be as active as they can be. Taiga and Sofie were very busy playing with the toys on the floor until the rest of our friends came. We later made a circle and sang songs that we liked to perform in front of everyone. We used our chairs this time for we believe that it is more comfortable sitting while listening to our teachers.                Oh wait! We saw a familiar face in Buds class today! It’s Lanah! And she brought her brothers and her mother today. Her mom told us that we’re going to learn more about New Zealand. They showed us two stuffy kiwi bird toys and they both looked so cute. When we squeezed them, it made a funny and chirpy sound. We passed them around and we felt that it was great seeing, hearing and feeling them.

They also brought some books with them. We liked them both. The first book was about the “Little Kiwi”. The mommy kiwi was looking for the little kiwi. She looked at different places but found the other native animals we can see in New Zealand. Eventually, she found that the little kiwi was inside the tree and the daddy kiwi knew it all along. We listened attentively and we thought that the story was so interesting and we learnt various animals at the same time.

The second book, “The Wonky Donkey” was all about a donkey that was pretty cool. He only had three legs but he could still dance well. We also found out that he was good-looking. We had a CD for the book so it was like we were also singing with the story. It was pretty amazing to sing and hear the story at the same time.

   Lanah’s brothers, Keanu and Sean, were there to help us too. They showed us the video of special dance moves from New Zealand, they called it HAKA, a war dance. It was pretty cool to see how the rugby players do it too. Lanah’s mom said that it was a kind of intimidation to their opponent so that they could really feel the team spirit in them. We saw that the rugby players looked so tough and strong and we felt that the Haka dance was also their sort of warm-up exercises.

After seeing the wonderful things about New Zealand, we got more wonderful treats from them. We ate some ice-cream. They called it the traditional hokey, pokey ice-cream. We had two flavors, vanilla and chocolate. It was so yummy but we only had to take a small portion for we still had to eat our own snacks later.

  The presentation was very great and we showed our appreciation to Lanah and her wonderful family. We missed Lanah so we all gave her a big, big hug. Again, we thank you for making our Tuesday more special! Thank you also for showing how beautiful your country is.

As we bid bye-bye to our friends from New Zealand, we started making our stamp art and easel painting. For the stamp art, we used a broccoli and bok choy. We cut the broccoli into half and we just used the bottom part of the bok choy. When we used the broccoli stamp, it looked like a tree and the part of the bok choy was like a rose. It was pretty cool that these vegetables could make such designs on our paper.

Our artworks were finished and we all had to stay inside our classroom because of the rain. We got some balls and bowling pins to play with. Our classroom had a great space for us to walk around and play with our friends.

We then sang some songs to cool us down after an active playtime. We liked to sing “Are you sleeping?” and we really liked it when it’s time to wake up and jump around and then sleep again.

It was a fantastic day that we had in Ohana! We hope to see you all again tomorrow!

Lots of love,

John, Sayaka and Maki