Farm, Jungle, Grasslands, and Pets

This morning we were very excited to see two big pieces of purple cloth hanging down from the wall like a giant tent. Underneath the cloth we discovered lots of toys and then brought more kitchen toys and blocks to play with. It was a great day for dressing up too with both Adam and Tokutaro dressing up like pirates and Gaby with her pink princess dress. On the main table we started to make some large farmanimals for the Ohana farm model. Today we used a material called Styrofoam which is quite soft and crumbly. First we looked through a book on farm animals to decide what kind of animal we wanted to make and Sara, Jennifer, Eito and Adam all decided to make sheep. We needed the teachers help to cut the Styrofoam with a special cutter which melts it using a small battery and a very thin wire. We drew an outline for our sheep and then with Darren’s help we used the cutter to cut around the edges. The sheep in the pictures all had black heads and legs and so we used some paint or black markers to fill these areas in. After the paint had dried a little we added a wiggly eye to the heads with some white glue. They look good and will go into the Ohana farm model today. Also on the table Gaby and Adam painted a paper plate each to make a bird model as they missed out on this yesterday. Gaby, Eito, Nile and Kosei also came to the table to stick their paper clay animals onto their individual farm models as well as a few sparkly birds in the trees or up in the air. We will make some more animals tomorrow. Ayaka kindly helped us with the calendar in Japanese. Some of the words we knew while others were completely new to us. Thank you Ayaka! After snack we did our monthly fire and earthquake drill. We all listened carefully for the whistle and as soon as we heard it we moved under the tables and covered our heads. We then started our fire drill by shouting “fire” as loud as we could, covered our mouths and noses and walked carefully down the stairs. The teachers all checked that we were out of the building and we went straight to the park. It was a bit warmer in the park in the sunshine and had a great time playing on the slide and swings today. When we returned to the classroom it was time for our circle time and we broke into groups of 3 or 4. Each group then came forward to collect animals so that we could sort them into 4 categories. We had the following categories to look for: Farm Animals, Jungle Animals, Grassland Animals and Pets. It was a little difficult at first because we know that dogs for example are used on a farm as well as for pets. Some people keep snakes too as well as there being snakes in the jungle and grassland areas. Ayaka kindly helped us by telling us the names of the animals in Japanese too so that we could sort them onto a piece of paper divided into the 4 sections. We learnt the words in Japanese for Uma (Horse), Lion (Lion), Zo (Elephant), Hebi (Snake), Kangaroo (Kangaroo), Hitsuji (Sheep) and Buta (Pig) as well as several more animals. To put them all away we used both the English and the Japanese words. Well done Flowers Class, Great Job!! Have a great afternoon.