Recycling and constructing

Today was a big day as we worked on constructing something with a huge amount of our junk art materials. Luka actually got us all going because when he arrived at school, he took the large boxes that Vincent’s mum, Mayuko had prepared for us for the “Sumo wrestling” and he positioned them all on top of one another and made a really tall tower. When we arrived at school, it was not possible to work on it as it stood so we laid it down, horizontally and started our morning construction. We put everything where we wanted to and taped things down. Our teachers used the glue gun as well so that some of the smaller lighter containers would be secure. We worked on it during most of the morning until some of us became interested in the Marble Run. When we went downstairs for snack time, we put the entire construction on the table so that we could continue to work on it after gymnastics. We added a few small accessories and then packed the remaining junk art materials away. Just before we break for Spring Break, five of us will have the opportunity to take away a piece of our amazing construction. We actually gave the construction a name. It is a huge castle with on one side a ‘Chocolate Castle’; on the other side, an ‘Ice Cream’ castle’ and in the middle, a ‘Bottle Castle’. In the section where the ‘Bottle Castle’ is, there are some straws in case people are thirsty.

In our one circle, Hisami took five animals and said that they were all hungry. So we took them to the supermarket, one at a time, to buy something to eat. They bought their food and took the food home. While they were all eating a big storm came and all the food was washed away by the rain and stormy weather. So everyone helped look for the food and luckily we found everything. The problem was that we didn’t know what food belonged to which animal. It was amazing because we remembered and told Hisami which animal was eating what food e. g. panda was eating cherries, kangaroo was eating onigiri etc. Then we all chose an item of food and the storm came again and all the food was washed away and mixed up. We had to once again remember which food. We actually played a game which went like this. If Hana was the first child chosen, her task was to say “I had onigiri”; the child who then came after her had to say “Hana had onigiri and I had bananas”. As we went around the circle, our friends had to memorise more and more information. Lanah was the last one and she remembered all 11 children who came before her and what they ate.

Our gymnastics class today was the second last class with Tanaka sensei. Next week is his last lesson with us. When we come back to school after the Spring Break, we will have a new teacher whose name is Miyashita sensei. We met him a few weeks ago and we are sure that he will be just as great as Tanaka sensei. We are making a card for Tanaka sensei and took a photo of us all together, at the end of the class.

You can see from some of our photos from our gymnastics class that we had to find a partner and touch tummies and other parts of our bodies. Our new game today was someone being the chasing person. They had to count ten and then they tried to catch us. If we were caught, we had to make ourselves look like a tree and freeze. When someone touched us, we unfroze and then tried to catch someone else. When we did our big and small circle game, we said ‘donut’ for the big circle and ‘orange’ for the small circle. We also played the ‘traffic light’ game where we moved our bodies when Tanaka sensei said green, we moved and when he said red, we stopped. We are looking forward to one more lesson with him and will give him the card that we are making.

We hope everyone is staying indoors, keeping out of the rain and the cold. We will see you tomorrow.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel