Kiaora from New Zealand

Thursday 26th February

Kiaora, today we visited New Zealand and had a busy day with indoor activities.

This morning some children loved making pictures so much with the wooden shapes on the table that they ended up doing 7 or 8 pictures and Kosei did them all.  

Flowers continued to make their money today. We are so lucky to have so many different currencies to look at and get ideas of how we want to make our own money. Nile decided her country’s flag and money is from Nileland. Jessica’s is from Jessica Canada and Kosei’s from Mexico. 

After snack today we stayed at the tables and Sharee told us about some special/famous foods from New Zealand. One is a fruit that starts with ‘K’. After some hints Flowers guessed it was ‘Kiwi’. In New Zealand we don’t call it kiwi but kiwifruit. Because the people are called kiwis so as not to mix up with the people, we call them kiwifruit. Honey is another special food in NZ. New Zealand has some special flowers and clover that the bees love so we can make delicious honey that is good for our bodies. And finally Hokey Pokey ice cream is world famous in New Zealand! Flowers all tasted it and they thought it was yummy.

We sat on the mat and Sharee tried to trick Flowers with the flags of Australia and New Zealand but Flowers were too smart and knew which one was the New Zealand flag. In New Zealand for lots of games and songs we count to four. In Maori it is: tahi, rua, toru, wha. The children had heard it once before during our walk to the park greeting song and we were happily surprised to see that Nile could remember it. We practiced counting and then Sharee and Ayaka demonstrated how to do a Maori stick game. Sharee remembers learning this at school. We listened to a Maori song as they tapped the sticks and passed them back and forth and flipped them over. Flowers were excited to have a turn even though it was quite hard it was fun taking turns.  

We also watched some Maori dancing on the Ipad and stood up and tried to copy the dancing, swaying our hips, wiggling our fingers and swinging our arms. We saw pictures of New Zealand’s national bird, the Kiwi and noticed Sharee was wearing an All Blacks rugby jersey, just like the men in the picture. Olivia knew a rugby ball is not a normal round shape and looks more egg shaped.

After lining up to get our passports stamped we cut out our coins and chose origami paper to stick them on.

When Flowers saw the teachers putting out the chairs they were excited because they knew we were going to play musical chairs. They are really fast at this game now! 

Have a great day, stay warm and we look forward to seeing you next tomorrow.

Love  Ayaka, Mabel and Sharee