Mighty Machines 'Show & Tell' with Koinobori making

We hope you all had a great day yesterday and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We completed our jungle part of the animals theme today by adding some more animals to our group jungle artwork. Kosei added the beautiful tiger he painted last week while Adam, Eito, Lucinda and Riko helped glue on some more twigs and leaves. On the second art table we used four kinds of stencils and then sponged some colored paint through the holes to make pictures of snakes, crocodiles and tigers. We used some blue-tack to hold the stencils in place and once we had applied the paint we carefully lifted the stencils to see our wonderful pictures. Once they have dried we will add some last details and then add them to the group artwork. We saw also that the main balcony doors were open this morning and there was a water play trough ready to be used. On the sides of the trough were lots of ocean animals for us to play with. We got a little wet having fun with the water but it was nice and warm outside so we were not at all concerned. Alexis and Nile did a great drawing each on the large whiteboard easel of some beautiful mermaids. The colored blocks were also popular with Eito and Adam this morning. They saw there were lots of colored cylinders and guessed before building which would make the tallest tower. After clearing away the toys we completed the calendar and Ayaka helped us with her beautiful singing voice with the Ohana song. It was then time for our last ‘Show & tell’ for the year from Wesley. Wes had brought a book called ‘Might machine’. Nile guessed correctly that it was a book and he then told us how he knows a lot about machines, how the front of the book tells us about the names on the first few pages etc. He then turned to the dump truck and told us how this is the biggest dump truck in the world. It can carry a whole house. Wes wanted to show his friends and walked slowly around the circle explaining. He told us how it is his special book and that he got it for his birthday. He then told us all about the crane and how it folds down when not being used. Kai, Lucinda, Alexis and Adam all asked Wesley some questions about the book such as : “Why did you bring this book”? – “It’s my favorite book”, “Which page do you like”? – “I like all the pages” etc. Well done Wes, it was a great show and tell. In circle time Ayaka introduced us to a special day which comes on May 5^th called Kodomo no hi, or children’s / boys day. At this festival koi flags are flown and Ayaka very kindly then read us a story about how this tradition came about. In the story the samurai had flags and a boy sked if they could have a flag just like it and a kind man saw some koi fish and decided to use that idea to make flags for children. Traditionally it was thought that koi were very strong as they could swim upriver where they would turn into dragons. They also ate lots of Mochi at festivals and ever since then the koinobori have been displayed at this time of year. We then came to the table to make our own koinobori flags. We used some cloth and cut them into fish scale shapes before gluing them onto the white koinobori paper. They look great but we will need to add a few more tomorrow. Have a great afternoon.