Weavers and Bamboo cutters
We hope you all had a great weekend despite the rainy weather. Today on the table we saw lots of colored yarn and a weaving loom. At first we didn’t know what it was until we saw Sharee winding the yarn back and forwards on the wooden frame to make the strands to weave. To make the yarn into a piece of weaving we used a long plastic needle and then going back and forwards ‘under and over’ the vertical yarn. As we went along the rows we added some beautiful wooden beads to the yarn. We 
needed to add the beads one at a time to make them fit correctly. We will continue the weaving tomorrow morning on the table. It is already looking really good and very colorful. On the table next to the loom sat 2 princesses Lucinda and Alexis. They were all dressed up in dresses and made lots of pink cookies with 
the play-dough. On the main table we saw a big pile of bamboo. The bamboo was cut recently and was brought back from Darren’s family land in Nagoya. It is still green and each piece was about 15 centimeters in diameter. Using the saw we cut the pieces into different sized pieces to be used on the 3rd floor balcony. The first piece we looked at had dried a little and cracked along one side. Tokutaro and Marc came to help make it into two half pipe pieces by each pulling on one side. It was quite brittle and eventually snapped in half. Wow, we are strong! Using the saw we carefully cut the bamboo and then 
tried to stack the pieces up to make a tower. After packing away our snack things we all went to the library with the teachers to read some books together. The book ‘The Bernsein Bears go to the Dentist’ was very popular as it showed a small bear with a 
loose tooth just like our friend Nile. After library time we all made a circle and sang some familiar songs together including: A Ring, A ring of roses, This is the Way we Wash our Hands, Hammer the nails etc. Soon Tanaka Sensei arrived for today’s gym class. We started off by warming up with some stretching and balancing exercises. We then tried a game where we needed to walk and as soon as Tanaka Sensei said “Kaminali” or “Karasu” we had to find a partner and stand back to back or hog each other face 
to face. We then played a traffic light game where Tanaka Sensei said “Midori” (Green) we all walked and when he said “Aka” (Red), we needed to stop. At 
first it was a little difficult for some of us to stop immediately but we soon got the hang of it. Tanaka Sensei then became a truck and we had a lot of fun rushing to touch the walls if he said “Aka”. In the short circle time we played a few games with the occupations cards and alphabet. We each got a card and then had to find the first letter sound amongst the wooden alphabet. It was a little difficult at first but with our friends help we managed to find the correct letter. We then each had a card
but the wrong letter and had to quickly find the appropriate letter and stand on the yellow taped line when finished. Finally Darren hid the letters around the classroom and we needed to search for the correct letter and return to the yellow 
line as quickly as possible.
Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Sharee & Nanako