Piano & Farm Animals

On the table this morning we saw the flying pig wooden model we have been making over the last few days. Eito, Tokutaro, Jennifer and Adam all came to the table to help put more of the pieces together. We started by gluing in the crank follower which makes the pig go up and down. We then made up the rods with plastic ends to hold the wings in place. We also attached the pig’s legs with hooks and string to make the legs go up and down. It is really starting to come together and hope to finish it over the next few days. On the big table we saw the farm animal toys along with some white art clay and small colored sticks. We started making our own small farm animals and used the art clay to make the bodies and heads and then the sticks to make legs and necks. After the art clay has dried a bit we will attach the wiggly eyes and color them with paint markers. We made sheep, horses and pigs. On the carpet the K-Nex construction set was very popular with all of us and we made giant snowflakes together using the grey and red stick pieces. The soft toys and flowers were also popular especially the fox and wolf which are nice and big. After packing away the toys and having snack it was time for todays ‘Show & Tell’. Riko brought along some wonderful music related items including a score sheet for ‘twinkle, twinkle, little star’, a book of music and several photos of Riko and her brother Rintaro dressed up and playing at a musical concert. We were very lucky to see and hear Riko playing on the class piano twinkle, twinkle little star. It was a wonderful performance and all her friends listened very carefully. Riko then showed her friends her photos from the concert and answered a few questions from her friends with a little help. Thank you Riko, you did a great job! Together we then looked at a book called ‘Big Red Barn’ which had lots of farm animals in it. It told the story of the animals on the farm all coming out to play in the field together the whole day and then sleeping together under the moon. We named all the animals and then sang ‘Old McDonald’ had a farm together. We weren’t so sure of the noises goats made but were told by Sharee that goats make a “Maa” sound. We then all played a game where we chose a farm animal in our head and gave our friends some clues to see if they could guess which ones we were thinking about. We gave lots of clues such as the color, the sound they make and if they laid eggs etc. After we all had a turn we moved to the small play table to see a big model farm. We had already chosen a farm animal toy and pretended there was a storm coming and the horse was scared and so he called one of his farm animal friends over. Soon all the animals were on the grass but there was no barn or any trees to shelter under. Darren then showed us a paper barn for the farm but it had no colour on it and so he started to color it. We each have a small box farm for our paper-clay animals we made in the morning and were given a paper barn each to color as well as a tree each. We glued on the barn, tree and grass to our box farm and will add the fences and animals soon. Have a great afternoon.