Crocodiles, Animal Masks and letter Sounds

This morning we saw the big crocodile we have been making walking across the carpet area towards the other toy animals. He looked hungry and Adam chose to feed the crocodile a small snake from the box. Soon Eito joined him and they saw lots of egg boxes on the carpet too. Next to the egg cartons were some ping-pong balls which looked like eyeballs because they had the colored part of eyes painted on the outside. We took the egg cartons to the table and using a marker we wrote lots of numbers into the depressions in the boxes. We then took the boxes back to the carpet area and using the eyeball ping-pong balls we played a game. The object of the game was to throw the ball and try and get the ball to land in the highest numbered depression. If the ball landed in a numbered area we then went to the whiteboard to write down our score. Soon Lucinda wanted to join in the game and helped write the numbers as well as throw the balls. On the games and numeracy table Wesley and Claire tried a new game called ‘Speedy Fingers’. There is a box with lots of colored balls which one of us must shake first. This leaves a pattern in the box which we needed to copy by putting colored foam pieces into an identical patterned box. The first to copy the pattern is the winner. Today Claire won the first game before they moved onto the art activity on the tables. On the main table we saw the animal masks we started yesterday and lots of materials to decorate them with. Jennifer worked on her giraffe mask, Riko her mouse and Kosei his tiger. Next week we will add some holes and elastic to hold them on our faces. We looked so very cute. Lucinda brought in a wonderful helmet to go with the astronaut backpack she brought in earlier. Arata immediately began to dress up in the astronaut’s outfit and pose around the classroom. After packing away the toys Ayaka went through the calendar with us and we then sang a wonderful Japanese song about a small garden and a seed that grows into a flower. The song then moves to a medium garden with a medium seed and then a large garden and seed. Thank you Ayaka for helping us with the song and showing us the actions. After snack time we went to the park and it was very hot. We made sure we had bug spray, our hats and sunscreen on before leaving and took a spray bottle of water to spray water mist around so that we could stay cool. We played mostly with the sand toys but gathered under the tree for some protection. We made sure we drank lots of water too. After returning to the classroom we looked at lots of letter sounds on the carpet and thought of some words that began with those sounds. In our notebooks on the table we practiced writing those letters and drew some pictures from the beginning sounds as well as writing what our pictures were of. We got to use some colored pencils, markers and crayons on our pictures and big letters too. Have a great afternoon and we look forward to seeing you at the conferences tomorrow.