Happy birthday Manuel and Koh

We had a wonderful morning with our friends, teachers and three guests viz. Mina san who is Koh chan’s mum, Rosa who is Manuel’s mum and Marbik who is like Manuel’s second mum. They arrived early for the party so we included them in part of our morning’s activities. Mina san came earlier so she sat with those of us who were playing with the pop beads on the table in the free play area. She was curious about the beads and we showed her how you

connect them and then how you pull them apart. She was also able to watch us as we chose our morning jobs and then performed some of them e. g. the snack time leaders prepared the tables for snack time.

While they were preparing our snack time table, we packed away the books. Our teachers have noticed that the one job that no one volunteers for each day is

Library Leader. So Shelley suggested that Hisami, Liezel and Shelley, all put their names on the job list too so that no job is left undone. Today Shelley volunteered to be the Library Leader and she packed the books away carefully on the shelf. Then we changed the calendar and did roll call. Some of us like to say yes in a funny tone of voice. Just before we started the

actual party, we sang our “good morning” song and Rosa, Marbik and Mina san all learnt the words and tunes really quickly. We all then went to sit on the large carpet to start the party. Koh and Manuel sat together at the birthday table however when we looked at them, we realized that they were not wearing their crowns. Luka gave Koh his crown and Lanah gave Manuel his crown….that is when they really looked like birthday

boys.

You can see from the photos that Koh was dressed in his “tuxedo” and Manuel had a smart black T-shirt on, for their special birthday celebration. We sang “How old are you now?” and they answered “4 years old”; then we sang “Manuel and Koh are four years old”; and

they told us that they felt really happy so we all stood up and held hands in a circle and sang “When you’re happy and you know it”. We jumped, did small jumps, blinked our eyes, clapped our hands, turned around, shouted happy birthday and whispered happy birthday. The last action that we did was sit down. We sat on the carpet again and gave them their gifts; Hana gave Manuel his and Daiki gave

Koh his. While they were looking at the beautiful cards that we made, their mums prepared the candles and Hisami turned the lights off. Wow, on the table was a beautiful tray with pieces of cake inside origami boxes with cute plastic toothpicks as well as a circular platter with cupcakes decorated with icing that had Lightning McQueen and all his friends.

Koh and Manuel blew their candles out after we

clapped four times and we sang “Happy birthday to you” in both English and Japanese. Manuel and Koh chose us one by one to go and wash our hands and get ready for our party snack…..yummmmm! Lanah and Koh were the snack time leaders so they stood together and led the singing. We ate plenty of cup cakes and cake this morning and our parents wondered whether we would eat our lunch. The answer was YES….of course we had room for lunch after playing in the park;

especially on this hot sunny day. We want to thank Rosa and Mina for their generosity today; Rosa baked and decorated every single cupcake and Mina together with Koh chan’s papa, Carlos, made all the origami holders for our cake. Thank you, arigatou, gracias…. During the early part of the morning, we completed some art activities at the tables. Miyu, Koh and Luka made their headdresses for our end of year party and then they copied patterns with Shelley. We all started working on challenging puzzles and surprised our teachers when some of us

completed 35 piece and 49 piece puzzles all by ourselves. They decided to present us with a real challenge tomorrow and took out a box with three puzzles. The one that they will place on the table for us has 96 pieces in it. They think that we can do it, so this will motivate us to complete it. Today was Koh’s Show and Tell and he brought along some shells which he collected when he went to Guam over Golden Week. He told us that Guam was in the US

and that he went to the beach and found the shells and some pieces of coral. He walked around so that we could all look at and touch the shells and coral. The shells felt smooth and hard and the coral felt bumpy and hard. We asked him questions about the shells and coral and he answered with pride and a big smiling face. Thanks for your Show and Tell, Koh and thanks Manuel and Koh for a lovely birthday celebration with your families.

See you tomorrow for the start of our art project. Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel