Monday and its March

Monday, March 2^nd, 2015 We started a new month and it starts with the sound “m” which is the same as “Monday” and Michaela, Mika, Miyu and Manuel. The new month is called March which is a bit funny for us because sometimes we march to the music during our music time. Our teachers often tell us that in English there are many words that sound the same but they mean different things e. g. hare is another name for a large rabbit and hair is what is on our heads. There are words in Japanese which also sometimes sound the same and mean different things too.

So today is March the second and it is Monday and we were so grateful for a sunny day. Yesterday was such a terrible day, weather-wise as it was cold and rainy. We had fun outside in the sun when we went to the park, which was full of friends playing there. Some schools had mums too who were having a picnic. We can’t wait for the weather to warm up and start having picnics too; and then have our Spring picnic with the entire school and our families.

In our gymnastics class today, you can see that Tanaka sensei demonstrated what we needed to do with our partners, with Vincent. When we found a partner we had to put our foreheads together; put our ears together; touch bottom to bottom; touch bellybutton to bellybutton; touch knees to knees and lastly feet to feet. When we did these exercises, we laughed as some of them felt a little uncomfortable for us……..in the photos you can see us doing some of the actions.

In the early part of the morning, at one of our activity tables, we used pop beads. We did this activity to work on our strength as well as our fine motor skills. We had to find the holes to pop the beads into one another and then when we packed away, we had to pull them out using our strength. It was as if we had to pop them in and “unpop” them, out!

At one of the activity tables, we played with the special play dough that we made on Friday. It had become a little hard over the weekend so we had to add some more conditioner to soften it. We love the texture of the play dough as it is more soft and mushy than regular play dough.

We had another table with some junk art materials on it but since we had to prepare our classroom for gymnastics, we didn’t have a chance to make anything. We are planning on making a large collaborative construction which our teachers are going to sit with us and discuss. Of course they have their own ideas, but they want the idea to come from us.

William L and Vincent completed their origami “Hina doll” pictures and some other work that they had missed last week. They spent time drawing faces, folding origami paper and looking for collage materials that they liked. Tomorrow is Hina Matsuri and it is also William L’s 4^th birthday. We are looking forward to celebrating with him and Miyu chan later this week as they are our friends who have birthdays in March.

Later in the morning Hisami read us a story which was actually a Japanese story but she translated it into English. It was all about recycling and what we need to do with garbage. In the book it says how important it is for everyone to look after the earth because we share it with people, animals and plants. In the same way that we look after our toys and things, we need to look after the earth. One way that we can make a contribution is by being careful with garbage; as well as separating the different things that we throw away. Our teachers say that it can be confusing because when you go to other parts of Japan they have different rules and when we go to other countries they also have different rules for garbage. As long as we do our best to take care of our environment, this is what counts.

We look forward to learning more about how best to take care of our world.

Thanks for a fun day today.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel