Stop means 'freeze'

Today we were very busy preparing for Tokutaro’s birthday party on Friday. We decorated stars for him which we will give him as a gift on Friday. He also wanted to make one so on the back of his one our teachers wrote: “My name is Tokutaro and it is my birthday today”! Usually we write a birthday wish on the back of our stars so his one will be different. We did some other activities at the tables as well. Nico, Finn and Oliver made origami fruits. When they wanted to make a banana, they took a yellow piece of paper and rolled it up so that it was like a 3D picture. They pasted them onto a piece of paper and they stand out on the paper. Usually when we do a drawing it is flat but these pictures are not. Eva completed her placemat which she will use from now on as her own. We have a special routine when we eat snack and lunch and that is we lay our places independently with our placemats, drink bottles and food. At the end of our meals, we wipe the placemats down and pack everything away. These routines sometimes take a long time however we enjoy all the rituals that we have to do at these times of the day. Upstairs we are learning about the different food groups and we looked at the food pyramid in the book “Good enough to eat”. We are concentrating more on the foods that we should eat rather than the ones that we shouldn’t eat.

Tokutaro, Gento and Eva had fun together playing with play dough and we sang a song together while we were rolling it. The song went like this “Roll out the play dough, tweedle deedle dough; roll out the play dough, the north wind blows; Roll it nice and flat, roll it nice and thin; Roll out the play dough so we can have some fun”. Shelley changes the words of songs so often and sings to us constantly during the day. It is sometimes tricky for people working with her as they think that they know a song, however the following day, she may change the words so that it fits in with something else.

Our circle time was filled with lots of singing and actions. Our little friends love singing and dancing and today they arrived at school and Shelley had the Jolly Phonics CD playing. They love the CD and towards the end when the voice on the CD says the letters of the alphabet, Tokutaro and Gento in particular, always copy them. They say: “A, A, A”. We sang our “Hello” song with Eva too and then when our friends came downstairs to have snack time with us, we sang it again. We also sang “Open them, shut them”, “Tommy Thumb”, “Everybody clapping” and “Twinkle, twinkle little star”. We sang “Twinkle, twinkle” earlier in the day when we were decorating our stars at the activity table.

Tokutaro and Gento learnt the signal stop today. The music was playing and they were running around the floor; so Shelley joined them and started walking on the carpet and kept on repeating the word walking while doing the action. Then she suddenly said: “Stop” and put her hand up for them to understand. Soon they were stopping their bodies, putting their hands up and saying something that sounded like “Stop”. We will practice this tomorrow with our other friends and see if they understand. We will eventually learn how to play the ‘freeze’ game with the CD. In the game, you also have to stop and ‘freeze’ like a statue.

Outside in the park, Eva played with the balls; Nico and Gento sat on the swings; Oliver, Tokutaro and Finn climbed up the huge slide and we all had fun with our friends and teachers

Love Shelley, Darren and Kanako