Birthdays and New Zealand

Thursday, March 5^th, 2015 We had such a busy day today, it flew by so quickly. It started off with us talking about our Marble Run that we made yesterday. It was partly successful and partly unsuccessful so today we looked at two pictures of Marble Runs and started all over again. We realized that when you use toilet rolls, making elbows for corners is really difficult. When we looked at the pictures we realized that all of the toilet rolls do not need to be joined together; there can be another section that catches the marble from the first section and then another and another etc. The toilet rolls in the one picture were colourful so we took different coloured tape and wound it around them. We now have a huge selection of colourful tubes which we will redesign tomorrow. Sometimes we have to have short periods where we work and discuss something and carry it over to the next day. Today was like that because we had two events with parents.

The first one was a birthday party for William L and Miyu. It was a bit tricky for us to sing some of the songs because we had to change the words. William L is already four but Miyu is not yet four; she will be four on the 18^th March. We sang “How old are you now?” and Miyu knew that she was not yet four and she told her mum this. Then we stood up and made a large circle and sang “When you’re happy and you know it”. We gave suggestions for the actions which were jump, turn around, clap your hands, stamp your feet, stand on one leg and our teachers suggested that we shout ‘happy birthday’ and whisper ‘happy birthday’ too.

Then we sat down again and presented Miyu and William L with their crowns. We held up four fingers and sang “Four little candles” and then counted four in many languages. William L counted in English and Chinese, Miyu counted in Japanese and we all counted in Spanish and Tagalog. We lit a special ‘cake’ for each of them with a number four candle in each one. We counted and clapped four and they blew the candles out. We then sang “Happy birthday to you” in English and Japanese and Hana gave Miyu her present that we made and Koh gave William L his present. Just before we went to have snack, Darren, William L’s dad read us a wonderful story called “The Selfish Crocodile”. The crocodile had no friends because he was so selfish and full of self importance. When he was in trouble and needed friends, no one came to help him as they were all so scared of him. There were fabulous lessons to be learnt in this story viz. the things that we sometimes are scared of are things that we do not need to fear – the mouse went inside the crocodiles mouth to extract his rotten tooth even though he could have been eaten by him; being kind is the best way to be in life – the mouse helped the crocodile even though he didn’t know him very well; you bring people close to you when you are kind to them and this is what happened in the end; the crocodile had many friends when he opened up his heart to everyone.

We had a wonderful snack prepared by both mums today. Asako san made cute lollipop cupcakes and Rie san made circular ‘sandwiches’ with apple on the bottom, jelly on top and garnished with a piece of mandarin. Everything was so delicious. We want to say a huge thank you to Asako san, Rie san and Darren for coming to share in this special celebration with us.

We then prepared ourselves for our second guest which was Sharee, Michaela’s mum. She came to teach us all about New Zealand because that’s where she comes from. We learnt so many things about New Zealand and our teachers were surprised to hear some of the things e. g. a kiwi is the national bird of New Zealand and even though it is a bird, it is unable to fly as it doesn’t have wings. Lanah said that maybe the wings were hiding underneath it. Kiwi’s have very long beaks which they use to find worms deep underneath the soil. Sharee also pointed out that people in New Zealand always say: “I am eating a kiwi fruit” not “I am eating a kiwi” because it may sound like they are eating a bird! People in New Zealand are sometimes called “Kiwis”. They have an abundance of bird life and the names of their birds are how they look are quite unusual e. g. a blue duck, a blue pigeon, a morepork which looks a bit like an owl; a kakapo, tui and pukeko.

Sharee was wearing a black top with a white feather on it. In New Zealand some of the sports teams have the word “blacks” in their names. The rugby team is called the All Blacks and the basketball team is called the Tall Blacks.

Sometimes people greet one another by saying “kia ora” and if you are at a special Maori ceremony, people sometimes touch noses to say hello. If you want to count in Maori you say tahi, rua, toru and wha (which is pronounced fa). The Maori’s are the indigenous people of New Zealand and they were the first people that settled in New Zealand. We learnt a Maori stick game that Hisami and Sharee demonstrated to us; a Maori dance and we painted a magical painting together. We had a large piece of paper on the table and we counted see anything on it. We started to paint it with green paint and suddenly shapes started to appear. It was a “tiki” which is a special magical creature that is supposed to help you whenever you need help. It is green in colour, made from a stone called jade and is a good luck charm.

Thank you Sharee for your wonderful presentation on New Zealand! Thanks again to our birthday party mums and dad too. It was a wonderful day and we are full in our hearts, minds and tummies.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel