Sliding together is fun!

Beautiful sunshine greeted us all when we awoke this morning and we enjoyed the warmth of the sun on our bodies while playing in the park. Nico and Tokutaro played with the ball and we practiced throwing and catching. Tokutaro preferred to kick the ball though and then he would pass it to Nico. Many of us enjoyed time in the sandbox and going up and down the slide. It was really muddy in the sandbox today and some of us still wanted to go to the tap and fill containers up with water to mix with the sand afterwards. During the morning we all did different activities at the tables. Downstairs we had four sections that were colour coded. On the table was also the large container filled with plastic food. Our task was to match the food with the colours. We found asparagus, cabbage, grapes, cucumber and peppers for the green section; tomatoes, apples, apple juice, watermelon, ketchup and strawberries for the red section; corn, pancakes and lemons for the yellow section and eggplant for the blue/purple section. There are not many foods that are blue we discovered! We also played with play dough and plastic cups and put small balls of play dough inside the cups or even large balls. In our morning circle we sang so many songs and today Tokutaro even said words when we asked: “What is your name?” We sang many of our favourite songs today which included: “Open them shut them”, “Tommy Thumb”, “The wheels of the bus”, “Hello”, “Everybody clapping” and “These are my 10 little fingers”. We counted many things today, all the way up to 10.

Upstairs Noa and Jamie made paintings of fruit and vegetables. First all the children spoke about the shapes and colours of the various fruit and vegetables. Noa painted a carrot, corn, tomato, broccoli, banana, orange and eggplant. Jamie painted broccoli, chicken, banana, tomato and pizza. We also did a group drawing of fruit and vegetables. Noa and Nico also did cutting today on thick cardboard. It is tough to cut strips from cardboard as it is really thick. We all did another activity using strips of coloured paper in a pattern. This is a follow up of what we did this past week with patterns using dominoes. First we made patterns with block in different colours and shapes and then we used paper strips and made patterns with them. We could choose the colours for our own patterns.

The photo of Sophie and Shelley was taken by Tokutaro all by himself. He spent part of the morning taking photos with the camera. He sometimes put his finger in front of the camera, so many of the photos have an orangy coloured haze on them. Tokutaro and Sophie listened to two of their favourite stories. One is called “Goodnight Moon” and the other one is called “Go Clifford Go”. Beckett, Jamie, Nico, Noa and Finn listened to “The Potty Book for Boys”. We always smile when we read these stories as we remember when we wore diapers when we were much smaller. Upstairs we sang and did actions to the Body Rap, Ring a Roses and we also sang the “Hello” song.

We wish everyone a lovely weekend and we look forward to starting off our first week with Kana and Gou san. We wish Sabine a safe trip back home to Germany and look forward to welcoming her back for Halloween.

Love Shelley, Darren and Sabine