Here is the beehive.....

Freezing Friday; that’s what we think today was. It was too cold to go outside for us Petals, so we stayed inside and had a wonderful time, learning, singing, playing games, doing activities and more. We really had an amazing time and our teachers spent so much quality time with us. We will share some of what we learnt here below. We started off our day at the back of our classroom playing games in small groups. Hisami played the “Rubbish Game” with a few of us at the small table. It is a board game that helped us understand what things we can recycle and what things we throw into the garbage bin. We each had two cards with spaces for things that are recyclable, a spinner with numbers on it; there was a small board with little square cards on it, counters and a big garbage bin. We had to spin the spinner and mover our counter. If we landed on a square with a card, we had to look at the card and see if it was something that we could recycle or something that you throw into the garbage. We had to think about the pictures a lot and had interesting discussions with one another.

Liezel helped us complete the many floor puzzles that we could do. One of them was an Air Show puzzle with airplanes and parachutes; the second one was an animal puzzle with a zebra, a lion, a gorilla, crocodile and an eagle. The animal puzzles were quite difficult as they were all individual and we had to try to find the matching shapes. Usually we have square or rectangular shapes but the pieces were all unusual shapes for these puzzles.

Shelley sat with us at the Lego wall and together we placed blocks, characters furniture etc on the wall. While we were doing this we were engaged in imaginative and dramatic play. We created a house with furniture in it and different rooms. We spoke about the family and what they were all doing in the house. Lanah found many people who she placed in the house often asking what they were doing. Shelley joined in as if she was a child and when Lanah asked her where the dad was, she said that maybe he was still at the office working. Lanah said that he already came home and was in the bathroom. Her mum was in the kitchen and someone came to visit while her mum was cooking. The house that we made together also had a garden with fish in the fish pond. There were also “fixers” who were people who came to fix things. One of the “fixers” was fixing the tree while another one was fixing the wall of the house.

If you look carefully at the picture of the Lego, you can see some pots on the stove and there is one “fixer” fixing the dinosaurs tail. When Lanah asked Shelley what the “fixer” was doing with the giraffe, she told her that she was looking at the giraffes toes and giving her a manicure. We like to have manicures too and always show our teachers when we have nail polish on our nails.

After we had completed our free play time, we went to the tables and spoke about what we wanted to put inside our garden dioramas and then we drew some of our ideas. When we sit with our teachers we work really differently. We love it when they guide us and encourage us and we also like to have freedom to draw and create. We drew butterflies, grass, flowers, bees and even the sky. We used pencils and white paper for this activity. Our teachers asked us to write our names on our paper when we had completed our drawings.

At the second table, we had large pieces of paper and we drew whatever we wanted to. You can see Hana adding more things to her drawing of Cinderella and the Step Mother and Miyu adding to her drawing that she started yesterday.

These are works in progress and we will continue drawing on them next week.

After snack time, we sat on the carpet and had fun singing songs and dramatizing some of them. We first spoke about bees and insects and the different things that we know about them. We looked at the shape of the cells in their hive and tried to remember the word, hexagon. Shelley taught us a new song in English (which was Liezel’s idea) and Hisami taught us one in Japanese.

The one in English is the same tune as “Heads and Shoulders” and it goes like this:

“Flowers, stems, leaves and roots, leaves and roots x 2

And all they need is sun and showers

The seeds will grow into beautiful flowers”

We did similar actions to our “Heads and Shoulders” song but changed them for the last two lines of the song. Then we had so much fun because we all recited the poem “Isn’t it funny that a bear likes honey” and we all had a turn to be the bear. We ran around trying to run away from the bear…..phew! The next one was really exciting, especially since we have heard the song before but we had never actually dramatized it. Shelley and Hisami made a bee hive using a large piece of sheer black fabric and cushions and we all went inside the beehive pretending to be bees. We sang “Here is the beehive” and when the words said “come out of the hive”, we flew out and then flew back in when the words said “now they come flying back to the hive.

If you look carefully at our faces you can see how happy we were. Hisami’s song was about planting seeds and each of us had a turn to think of a fruit or vegetable and then we received a seed to plant into the soil. We are singing these songs in preparation for our parties at the end of the year.

Miyu was the first one to do “Show and Tell” and she brought a puzzle picture frame. It was a picture of Elsa from Frozen and you had to make the puzzle out of plastic. She told us that she made it together with her mum and her sister. Thanks for bringing “Show and Tell” today, Miyu chan.

We hope you have a great weekend and that the rain goes away soon!

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel