The Ocean is wide and full of sea creatures

What a marvelous Monday! We are all here again at Ohana and we know that our friends and teachers are waiting for us after the great weekend that we had with our loved ones. Today is also very hot and we can tell that some of our mommies and daddies were so diligent taking us to Ohana. As usual, Yurika first came to school and our teachers were still having the morning meeting so she quickly got inside and did her morning jobs. She went to the library and got some books and pretended that she could read some texts from it. When she felt that the teachers’ meeting was finished, she requested her teachers if she could play with our play dough, our teachers willingly took the play dough box out from the big cabinet and lay the utensils on the table. But wait…we had the short colored wooden sticks for the day. Last time, we remembered we had the popsicle sticks which were much bigger than what we had today. Hence, Yurika sat down and started manipulating the sticks with her tiny hands. Taiga and Jack came and they all shared the same interest for the day. So, after their morning jobs, they also took a seat and grabbed a handful of it. Kaia and Ivory finally joined in and together, they were so fascinated by how much they can do with their play dough combined with the special material. By the way, not to forget Ivory’s fashion statement, she made it certain that she wore several necklaces before she began molding her own play dough set. Afterwards, we all went to our play area where we found some construction tools and blocks. Jack and Taiga were patiently teaming up in building a small slide. It may be a bit challenging for Jack to work and sturdily connect the pieces together however Taiga was so kind to teach him how to do it and even helped him how to append one side to the other.             After our “learning through play” experience, we sat at the table and started doing our “ocean art bubble wrap”. To start off, our teachers showed us a picture of the ocean (this painting was contributed by Fanny – Kaia’s mum, during the international month). Here, we saw lots of fishes and two boats. Kaia recognized the picture. She probably remembered the time when she did this art work with her mum. And then, we were asked if we would like to make our ocean, of course, we enthusiastically said “YES!” And our teachers showed us the bubble wraps. They were cut in small squares and we dipped them in the blue and green plates of paint. We slowly stamped it in the paper and pressed the bubble wrap gently to make sure that the paint will be embedded on the paper. And magic simply appeared…we had created dots all over our paper. We continued doing the same steps and it was so amazing that we were able to concentrate and do the activity for almost half an hour. This activity was not just about color appreciation but it also has a smattering of pressing skills with both hands and feeling the texture of the bubble wrap. We even popped some small bubble plastics before we worked on our ocean art. Taiga and Ivory were so quiet because they simply loved stamping and pressing the bubble wrap to make beautiful dotted patterns.

That was simply entertaining! After our special art activity, we washed our hands with little help from our teachers. We then went to our circle time corner and sang some regular songs. We learned about the feelings, weather and names of our friends. It was very awesome that most of us know each other’s names already and we can’t wait to see our older friends to come so that we can recollect their names too. Again, we took the ocean painting and lay it on the floor. We noticed that our teachers brought some plastic sea animals. We learned that there are also some other sea creatures aside from fishes in the ocean. We saw the octopus and squid, they both have eight tentacles but the only difference is the shape of the head. The octopus has more circular shape and the squid has an elongated face. We also saw the “shark.” It looked like scary but what we have in Buds class was a friendly one. So, we don’t have to worry! We also sang the “5 little fishes” song.

When we finished our snacks, we changed our clothes to smocks because we’re going up in the office to do some “water play” activities. Our faces just lit up and we were so excited for this new adventure. We all went up quietly and said “hi” to Maryna. We then saw the little plastic toys and cups that we got from our class in the water tub. Certainly, we made a big “splish, splash”. We even had the hose sprinkling water right on our faces. We were all laughing and giggling by the coolness and thrills that we got from this activity.

Thank you so much Ohana for the wonderful day. Hope to see you all again tomorrow! Have a wonderful day!

Lots of love,

John and Goh