Constellations

Our last day of Stars and Moon was really exciting because we made our own constellations. Ohana School’s resident artist, John from Buds Class, drew the outline of a number of different animals and our task was to use a toothpick and make holes all along the outline. We couldn’t imagine what would happen once we made the holes so when Shelley showed us what ours would look like in the dark, with a flashlight behind them, we were amazed. She made a few holes on the leg of her lion and then Hisami put her iphone behind it and we could see so many

stars, all making the shape of the lion’s leg.

The different kinds of animals that we made our holes on were a frog, bear, fish, bird, and sheep. We will try to look at them in the dark when we go home, while holding a flash light behind the page. You can see that the little dots we made look like many tiny stars, just like the ones that

you see in the night sky. We loved it when the classroom was dark and we could see all of our friends’ constellations that they had made. We also learnt that a constellation is a group of stars usually in the form of a recognizable shape or pattern. Real constellations sometimes look like animals. All of our constellations were in the shape of an animal. Hisami did an experiment with us all about the earth, moon and the sun. We know already that the moon has no light of its own and the only way that it gets light, is from the sun. We also know that the earth spins on its axis. So we went into the kitchen area and switched the light off so it was very dark. Hisami had

her iphone which she pretended was the sun; one of us pretended that we were on earth (which we really are) and one of us held the blue ball above our heads and pretended that it was the moon. Hisami showed us how the sun makes its light shine on the earth and on the moon. We took turns to do this experiment while our friends were making holes in their constellations and then we swopped places. We saw how the earth sometimes blocked the sun so that the moon couldn’t get any light.

We had a great time when we arrived at school as we had the large water trough inside our

classroom. It had water inside it and we threw all of our plastic toys into the trough so that we could wash them. We then took scoops and spatulas and scooped them out of the water into containers and then laid them on the table to dry. We loved playing with the water; moving the toys all around and seeing them all sink to the bottom. We thought that some of them would float but most of them sank. We wore plastic smocks so that we wouldn’t get our clothes wet; and while we didn’t get wet, the floor was like a swimming pool. At the very end of the day, we

took the toys and put them in their specific toy boxes. We played with wonderful wooden blocks this morning on the mat. The blocks were rectangles, squares, triangles, columns, arches, semi-circles, circles and more. We built some interesting constructions and then we tried to pack some of them into the small wooden box. This was just like a puzzle. We had to look carefully at the shapes and see what shape fitted next etc.

And now, talking about puzzles, you will never guess but we completed a

500 piece puzzle this morning (with the help of our teachers) Most of us loved the picture which was of all the Disney princesses. It took us the whole day to complete and since it rained so much during the day, it was the perfect thing to do. Today is the last day in Petals Class for some of us, because we will go upstairs in the new school year. Hisami and Shelley are going on holiday so today was their last day. From Monday,

we will be joining with our Flowers friends for the rest of Summer School. Have a great rest of summer school and happy holidays everyone. See you back in August! Love always Shelley and Hisami