We need our friends games!

Today was unfortunately Marc’s last day at school. We will all miss him dearly and will think of him every time we feed the little goldfish Sean, Marc and Liam. Thanks Marc, it is a great gift.This morning when we arrived in class things had changed a little. The table which is usually by the door had moved to the carpet area and had a ping-pong net set up on it along with two bats and an orange ping-pong ball. Tokutaro immediately wanted to play with Nanako while their friends all watched. On the second games and numeracy table we set up the tracks to play the ‘granny racing’ game which we enjoy. Unfortunately the batteries had run out and we needed to wait for the batteries to recharge before we could use it. While we were waiting to use it we put our names on a waiting list under Racer 1 and Racer 2. Once the batteries had fully charged we were able to start racing against our friends. Wesley tried on the play skis and went on a ski trip across the classroom. On the main table we continued with our picture frames made form cardboard. We put lots of color on the frames using paint markers and then glued on colored gems, buttons and wooden shapes. Once the frame was completed we got some white paper and started to make a picture to go inside the frame. We did a good job and some of us managed to finish our frames today. The play cubes we have been using this week were now near the teacher’s desk and we put these up with our friends. We used the wooden kapla blocks inside the play cubes too like we were in caves. Once we had packed away all the toys we read a book together called ‘The Donkey’s Dream’ which told the story of a donkey which while walking dreamed he was carrying a city, a giant rose and a woman on its back. We saw how the woman needed the donkey’s help to travel so far. When we asked the children “When do we need our friends help”? we got lots of answers including: “When we build with Lego”, “When something id difficult” etc. We then tried to see how we could work together with our friends to achieve a result. We sat back to back with one of our friends and using our legs pushed our backs together to try and stand up without using our arms. We paired up with a friend and tried it several times. We then tried standing back to back and linking our arms we tried to lift our friends onto our backs. Because we were standing we needed the teachers help to stay safe. We did really well and it was great fun. We then played a game with a partner where we listened to the teachers say a sound and we saw if we could write the corresponding letter on the whiteboard. We then checked we had the same letter as our friends and then chose our next friend to participate. We moved to the big tables to then do some work in our ‘Phonics’ notebooks. On each page we practiced writing the letter, then drew something that began with each sound and also wrote the name of the object we had drawn on the paper too. Have a great afternoon,