We love Mondays

Monday is often a tough day for people to go back to work or children to go back to school, but it was not like this for us. We were all ready to start our day with Shelley and it was just three of us in class today; Shelley, Nico and Sui. When we went to the park there were four of us as Moko came to help take care of us and we had fun together with the other children from the Japanese school nearby. They love playing with our toys and today they especially enjoyed the bubbles. We also met a little girl from the Philippines, called Hannah and she had the most amazing bubble making machine. She pushed a button and millions of bubbles came pouring out of it. She let us have a turn which was really kind of her. Nico especially loved chasing the bubbles that she made. In the second picture, Sui looked through the “bodies of the bees” that we had made just like she was looking through binoculars. When she was finished playing with them like this, we attached the bee’s wings, antennae and legs to the body. We were singing bee songs throughout the morning; “There was a bee” and “Here is the bee hive”. Sui completed her bee and learnt how to roll the stripes onto the toilet paper so that she could cover it completely with black and yellow stripes. Nico and Sui both played with play dough and we all rolled small balls and put them into a container. Nico also spent time playing with the “Wedgits” and Sui eventually joined him. Together they put all the pieces into their specific stands and they kept on looking at one another to see which piece went next. They were most co-operative when Shelley asked them to pack away and even if they were busy playing with another toy. They came to help pack away first and then went back to what they were doing.

Our morning circle included puzzles, naming objects and using appropriate vocabulary as well as singing and dancing. We sang “Let’s clap our hands together” and we named other parts of our bodies e.g shoulders, chin etc.

Then we took care of the calendar and even though Shelley sang today’s day really obviously loudly in the song, we were not sure which day of the week it is. We need Ren kun as he is so reliable when we play this game. In fact on some days, even when he knows the name of the day he says he doesn’t; just so that he can listen to Shelley’s funny song. Then we took out a puzzle with different shapes in it. Shelley asked us if we knew some of the shapes and of course we did. We knew triangle, circle, square and then we learnt oval, diamond, rectangle, pentagon, octagon and trapezoid. We think that the last ones are not so important to remember and Shelley thinks so too! We had to find a shape and then we had to put one back. We had to look carefully at the ones that we were holding and place them in their correct spots which we did well. We also identified the objects that were underneath the shapes e. g. pizza – triangle; present – square; bus – rectangle; kite – diamond; house – pentagon; rugby ball – oval; trapezoid – boat; clock – circle.

We then took two puzzles; one with different kinds of farm animals and another with different kinds of transport and again we identified them and placed them in their correct places. We lay on the floor as if we were riding a bicycle, lifted our legs in the air and spun them round and round. When we came to a red light we had to STOP. We sang “I ride my little bicycle”. We looked at our plants and we saw that they are growing really tall. They were falling down so we put some wooden sticks into the pots and tied them gently to the sticks to that they grow straight. We sang “I’m gonna shake my sillies out” and did the actions to the song. Our story today was called “Goodnight Moon”. Sui had fun with the silver dish in the park and not only did she use it to put sand in, but she also made it into a hat! We hope you stay warm in this cooler weather and look forward to seeing you all tomorrow.

Love Shelley