Welcome back Buds! Cherry blossoms are blooming!

Good morning everyone! What a great Monday! It is also a great start for the spring term. We are very happy to be here at Ohana again! As usual, we started our morning activities that we have on the table. We have some coloring pages for our birthday card. We also saw the hour glasses, play dough, and easter-themed sensory table. Everyone was so excited to try and experience everything in our classroom. Our classroom setup gave us more space in doing what we wanted. More spacious our classroom is, better atmosphere and interaction we have in the class.  In the beginning of our circle time, we did some fingerplays and sang the good morning song. When our teachers would sing the part where they would ask us “how are you?”, we responded with the word ‘good’ and some of us just nodded their heads and smiled. We assumed that it was also good. After that, we saw that John brought out a black bag and we noticed that there were some stuff inside. He shook it a little bit and we heard that it was making a “clucking” sound. Our teachers asked us to touch it and we felt something plastic or wooden. And then, we put our hands inside the bag to have a better feeling and yes, they were round plastic things. John took one out and we realized that it was a “castanet”. It was a great and common musical instrument that can make a “clucking” sound when you clap it together. We already knew how to use it but it was also great if we can do more from it. And of course, our teachers taught us what to do next.

We sang various songs with our castanets. We made the “cluck” sound with Twinkle, twinkle, little star, ABC song, Itsy bitsy spider, Baa,baa black sheep, and If you’re happy and you know it. We sang our hearts out and did some wonderful actions altogether. It was great to see Nikolas how confident he was and Yurika’s participation was very outstanding. Lisa hummed almost all the tune of the songs and she also started doing actions every now and then.

Our teachers also asked us to think of other things that we can do with our castanets. Dominik showed us that it can also be like a pair of sunglasses, Lisa did the same thing. Yurika demonstrated that it can also become a mobile phone. And she also pretended that she was calling her mom. Kaia and Nikolas made their castanets look like a pair of earrings for they put both of them beside their ears. It was very surprising to see how they have become very cooperative and creative with their ways in our classroom.

We also put some jigsaw puzzles together. Dominik was so focused and he even asked his teachers for help. He knew that he was fixing a dinosaur puzzle and he told us more about the colors and things that he could see from the picture. Kaia and Nikolas were getting very artisitic by scribbling on our easel. We have the whiteboard and our teachers gave us different whiteboard markers for a freehand art today.

 At the park, we saw the cherry blossom tree. It was wonderful and breathtaking. We were very happy how these trees grow beautifully and some of the teachers and students from Ohana were picking up the fallen flowers on the ground.

We would like to thank our teachers and friends today. We had a great time again in Ohana!

Lots of love,

John, Sayaka and Maki