Bye-Bye Olivia Party

Dear Flower Class parents, Today was Olivia’s last day at Ohana School before she goes to Japanese school. We will all miss her very, very much and hope she comes back to visit us again soon. We had a ‘bye-bye’ party for Olivia today with Christina her mother in the classroom which was very sad but we know we will see Olivia again soon for after school classes. On the table this morning were some paper plates and lots of colored paint. We started off by painting using the bright colors on the plates and then let them dry. We came back to the plates later in the day to make a piece of art work with Nanako. Also on the table were the farm animals we made yesterday with the paper art-clay. The animals had dried and we just needed to add some color and wiggly eyes to them. We used Posca paint makers and large marker pens to apply the color to them. We think we will need to make a few more animals for our small farms as because we know that usually lots of animals live on a farm. Marc, Jeremy and Riko all did a beautiful farm animal drawing each using the wax pastels to put in the picture frames you all provided. Thank you for bringing these, we now have an ‘art gallery’ area for the children to display their work. The teachers explained to us that this is our area and we could decide which work we would like to display in the frames. Please come in and take a look when you get the chance. Alexis, Jennifer, Sara and Lucinda all glued their grass, barn and tree onto their small farm models today too. On the carpet area the teachers put up some cloth on the wall like a tent and soon there were many of us playing with the toy food, colored blocks and soft toys under it just like a tent. After packing away the toys we saw Christina arrive to start our bye-bye party. We started by singing the good ‘morning song’ and Olivia told us all about her new school. She then answered lots of questions about which language she will be speaking there, her school uniform and why she is going to Honmura from tomorrow. We also sang our special good-bye song and then gave Olivia and Christina the special portfolio we have been making for her in class. In the book was all of Olivia’s best work and also some hearts which all her friends drew and wrote on. We read a book all about going to school called ‘Dora goes to school’. The book was partly in Spanish and Olivia helped us count and pronounce all the Spanish words too. We were very lucky as Christina had brought all the teachers a beautiful flower pot with some pretty purple flowers in them. Thank you Christina! We all gave Olivia a big hug and then did a group hug with some tickling our friends which was great fun. To finish our party we sang some songs and then took a big group photo for Olivia to take with her so she can remember all her friends. Soon it was time for snack and then Nanako read us a special book called ‘What is Easter’. When Nanako asked ”What is Easter”? Jennifer replied “It is all about God”. We then did a circle time to review the letters and sounds for a,t and i. We practiced writing the letters in the air and looked at some cards with objects beginning with those sounds. Moving to the table we brought back the paper plates that we painted in the morning. They were now dry and Nanako showed us how to fold the plate in half, add eyes, feathers and long streamer tails to make birds. They look wonderful and we are very proud of them all. We got into two groups to do this activity while the second group worked in our phonics and Literacy notebooks. We are sorry to see you go Olivia and love you very much.