Our Visit to the Pet Shop

This morning on the games and numeracy table we set up the chess set and soon we all wanted to play. The games all started well and we have all learnt many of the moves. Nanako came to help us play and we helped her with the rules too. We have now started using all of the pieces and our friends are good at helping us if we can’t remember the moves. Kosei was able to give Marc lots of advice as he is a good chess player now. On the carpet the colored blocks were popular with Gaby who built a big tall tower with 11 of the blocks. Jeremy enjoyed using the Lego blocks on the carpet and built with the blue, green and grey blocks on the Lego board mats. Jeremy, Jessica and Arata all completed their animal models using the big cups which many of us did yesterday. Jeremy made a mouse model using blue and pink paper, Jessica made a pink rabbit and Arata finished his orange and black tiger. Next to the animal making Ayaka showed us how to do some origami animals. We used lots of origami to make the heads to animals and then used the markers to draw the bodies and make a picture on colored construction paper. We also played Uno on the carpet and found that we had 3 sets in school today. It looks like a very popular game and we decided we would use the school set in future so that we don’t get them all mixed up. Eito, Tokutaro and Adam all set up and played Uno together. The teachers had put out lots of plants on the table which need repotting but we ran out of time to do this activity. After packing away all the toys and materials we sat on the carpet to check the calendar in Japanese and English. When we looked at the daily schedule on the wall we noticed that the snack time and park time had moved around. The teachers then told us that we had 2 surprises for us today: the first was that after we would be going to a different park today and that we would be taking our snack with us, just like a picnic. The second surprise was that from the park we would be going to the ‘Pet Shop’ close by Amishiro Park. Before we left we needed to think a little about the rules for a pet shop. We decided that we needed to be quiet and we shouldn’t touch anything. We got ready with our smocks, hats, sunscreen, bug spray, water bottles and snack and soon headed off to the park. At the park we met with Huijin (Gaby’s mom) who had very kindly come along to see us and help out with our special pet shop visit. Thank you Huijin, it was very kind of you to help us out at short notice. After eating snack together we broke into 2 groups and half of us headed for the pet shop together while the second group played in the park together. At the pet shop we first took a group photo and then we saw lots of fish, terrapins, hamsters, shrimp and lizards. There were also lots of other things such as food for the animals for us to look at. We asked what the baby turtles eat and the pet shop staff said “Turtle food” which made us smile. We also asked the staff what their favorite animal is in the pet shop and they pointed out the little blue tropical fish. The teachers were so happy with us because we were so well behaved. Well done Flowers Class! Have a great weekend,