Praying mantises, art and a tiny piano

It was a real summer’s day today, and we had fun playing in the park, in the shade of the big tree. All of the sand toys were under the tree as well so that we could play there and be out of the hot, hot sun. We had a wonderful time playing together with our friends from Flowers Class and our teachers who joined in with sand and water play. Hisami made an assortment of onigiri on our request, and she tried to make many different shapes to accommodate our

needs.

Inside the classroom, we enjoyed doing a large group

art work and then smaller art works which we attached to the large one. The large one was made out of many different coloured pieces of construction paper which were joined together. We had a variety of drawing materials which we used on it to make patterns, shapes and pictures.

This is our work in progress. As you can see we first drew on the colourful paper and then we made these wonderful art works which our teachers pasted

on. We made our small paintings with small pieces of coloured paper. First we scrunched and crumpled them up into a ball, then we took a paint brush and dabbed the colour of our choice on the ball shape. We opened it up gently so that we didn’t tear the paper and saw beautiful patterns on it. Then we crumpled it up again and dabbed another colour on it. Each time we opened it up, we saw amazing patterns. We did it with a few

colours and then hung it on the balcony to dry. All of our small paintings dried really quickly so we could paste them onto the large piece of paper almost straight away. Our time indoors was a bit longer than usual so we landed up going to the park later.

Once we had completed our art activities for the day, we prepared for snack time and had a fun circle time. We sat together in the library and started singing all of the songs and poems that we have been listening to on the CD. We surprised

our teachers, because we knew the words and tunes, without the CD playing. We sang each and every one and when it came to our rap song about Butterflies, we knew the words and our teachers couldn’t remember them all. Our teachers need to learn the words a little more so that they can remember them like we can.

After snack time we had another small circle time and

this time it was all about eggs and what comes out of an egg. We thought of a chicken, Hisami thought of a bird, Michaela thought of a caterpillar and Shelley thought of a snake. We forgot to think about a praying mantis. When Akari did her Show and Tell two weeks ago, she brought along the interesting egg filled with baby praying mantises.

Yesterday, they started to hatch from the large egg so she brought it to school so that we could see the baby praying mantises. We even say one hanging from a thread like rope that came from the egg. There were many on the roof of the container. Most of us were glad that they couldn’t get out of the container and we were really happy to look at them through the plastic and the magnifying glasses.

When we returned from the park we had another circle time and this time it was with a new musical instrument that we have in our classroom. Hisami had a bag on her lap and she slowly pushed the instrument out of the bag after letting us touch it. It felt hard and it was a rectangular shape. We noticed that some things on it were black and white just like a piano. It was a piano. It was a baby piano. Hisami let us each play on

it and then she played “Twinkle, twinkle” and our “Ohana school song”. We are happy that we have a piano in our classroom now and we told Hisami: “Now you don’t have to go downstairs and use John’s big piano!”

It was a great end to a shorter week because tomorrow is no school. Our parents are going to school for the Parent Teacher conferences.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel