Morning routines and Dentists

Dear Flower Class parents, It is good to be back and wanted to say a big thank you to Ayaka, Nanako, Sharee and Goh San for covering for me and doing such a good job last week in my absence. It was great to see the children this morning coming into the classroom with such big smiles on their faces. On the table in the morning we saw there were four boards covered with felt. The boards have lots and lots of felt attachments to make your very own picture. There were lots of animals such as farm animals to attach as well as pirate and beach scenes too. Arata and Nile had a good time making pictures together. Also on the table the pink play-dough was very popular with many of the girls today while the construction blocks were popular on the carpet with the boys. Tokutaro and Eito soon discovered the lace truck cards on the small table and had a try at all of them. Jennifer, Lucinda and Alexis dressed up like princesses and had a ‘Princess Tea party’ on the carpet area. After packing away the toys we all sat down in a circle and gave Darren a special ‘Welcome Back Darren’ card from all of us. We had decorated the front with the words and inside drew pictures and wrote messages with our friends on beautiful hearts. Thank you guys, it was wonderful to get such a special card from you all. We headed for the park after snack time and we were all a bit surprised by how warm it was in the sunshine. We had a good time on the swings, playing with balls and using the slide. We soon discovered that there were lots of small balls on the floor and started to collect them. They were yellow or orange and the teachers told us they are called ‘BB’ balls here. When we got back to class we had our weekly gym class with Tanaka Sensei. We warmed up in the usual way by jumping, stretching and bending our bodies. We then tried our Ninja walking as quietly as we could. We played a few more games where we ran on the spot and listened to Tanaka Sensei until he said some Japanese words for crow, airplane, car or bike and had to pose correctly. We then tried some partnered games where we touched tummies, bottoms, ears and then laid down to touch the bottoms of our feet together. Finally we partnered up with one of us on all fours while the other balanced on our backs with their arms out. This was fun but a little tricky at first.

In circle time we started our new theme of jobs and we made a list of all the things we do in the morning before school. We put together the following ideas:

Put on our coats, bags and shoes, play, eat breakfast, Get in the car, study Japanese, exercise, walk, wash our bodies and faces, pee and brush our teeth. We the told the teachers all about why we brush our teeth and what happens if we don’t brush them correctly. We would get a ’cavity’ according to Jennifer and Olivia. We needed to look in a book to find out what this word meant. We found a good book called ‘Going to the dentist’ which showed us all about a boy’s first trip to the dentist. A cavity turned out to be a hole made by germs and the dentist looks for these. None of our fathers or mothers are dentists in our class.

Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Ayaka & Nanako