Pyon Chan Nanako's Rabbit

We had a great day today and again enjoyed the spring sunshine. We also had a special visitor courtesy of Nanako today. It was a surprise for all of us to see a new friend in the classroom but more on that later in the journal. On the table this morning Nile helped us paint some bamboo flower pots for the 3^rd floor garden space. We needed to wear smocks as the paint was a little sticky and we didn’t want to get it on our clothes. We painted the bottoms of the pots first and when they are dry we will paint the insides and tops too. On the carpet the marble run tracks were very popular again and we were able to build towers and spirals for the marbles to run down. Gaby came to the table and used the playdough and also joined Kosei making animals with the colored wooden blocks. There are lots of cards with animal pictures made up of triangles, rectangles, hexagons, squares, circles and parallelograms. To complete the pictures we needed to find the correct blocks and place them on the pictures carefully. We also saw a new display item today on the shelf which is a kind of optical illusion. There are two halves of a saucer shape which has a hole in the top. When we looked near the top there is a white stone visible but when we tried to grab the stone it turns out not to be there at all. It is actually sitting at the bottom of the mirrored section a few centimeters away. We then wanted to try a few different objects and so we replaced the stone with pieces of Lego, small animals etc. After packing away the toys and eating our yummy snack we headed for the park to enjoy the beautiful sunshine. Toku, Adam and Nile all used the netted area to play with a yellow Frisbee and practiced catching and throwing too. Sara played in the sand box today and dug a deep hole with her friends. Riko watered the flowers in our school garden and the flowers look great. We practiced our Ohana song all together and have completed 3 verses now. Today we thought of some actions to go with the words such as ‘Love’- Make a heart shape, ‘Friendship’ – Hug our friends etc. Nanako then introduced a new book to us called Little Rabbit Foo Foo which we found to be very funny with a naughty little bunny being given 3 chances to be nice. Unfortunately he didn’t manage to change his ways and was magically changed into a ‘Goonie’ by the magic fairy. Together with Nanako we then sorted the toy animals according to the environment they live in. First Nanako asked us to choose the ‘Farm’ animals and put them on the paper. We chose the animals from the box until all the farm animals were gone. Next we had some grassland animals to sort. Gaby realized that farm animals such as cats could also be in the pets section. There were other animals too such as dogs and snakes which could be pets. We then thought of some other animals that could be pets such as; snakes, fish, rabbits and hamsters. Nanako then asked “What is the difference between pets and wild animals”? – We then told Nanako how snakes could be bigger or smaller, how they dig under the ground, sleep in the grass etc. Adam suggested we need to feed pets, Tokutaro suggested we need to play with the animals and we also need to give them water and clean their cages. Nanako then asked us if we wanted to see a real rabbit. We were all really surprised to see Nanako come to the carpet with a big covered box. Under the covers was Nanako’s pet rabbit which she told us has had several names including ‘Muffin’ and is now called ‘Pyon Chan’. The rabbit was very cute and we were all able to hold Pyon Chan and stroke her carefully. She was very soft, warm and cuddly. It was a great treat for us. Thank you Nanako. Have a great weekend,