The Island Art

What a sunny Tuesday! Welcome to Buds class again! We’re all set to learn new things and enjoy the company of our friends and teachers. We definitely waited for this day because it’s our swimming day! We’re so glad and brought the important things for our swimming activity. Early in the morning, we put out some musical instruments. On our activity tables, we saw some Montessori equipments and the water art that we made from yesterday. Yurika came first. She instantly saw the Montessori materials and she sat down by the table and starting manipulating them. She was very absorbed with the more advanced puzzle pieces. She tried to fix it herself but eventually asked for teacher’s help. Goh-san was here today too. Our grandma who is very patient and caring to everyone, was trying her best to convince Yurika and Rei to play and share with the toys together. They both listened to her and of course, they had a wonderful time playing too. Charles, on the other hand, was so busy playing and discovering the musical instruments on the floor. He likes to play with the double-drums. He took out the drumsticks from the box and proudly tapped them and hummed a tune at the same time. He’s very entertaining. His friends were actually watching him and certainly enjoying his performance. When Yurika and Rei realized that he’s having an amazing time performing, they also took out a drum and some musical scrapers. Ivory, Anneke and Kaia got some castanets, another set of drums and the microphone. We sang some songs from our hearts and we unbelievably made a glorious orchestra/choir for the day. Great job Buds! Our special activity was about pinching, molding and pressing the play dough. We always cater our art projects with the development of our fine motor skills. First, we molded the dough into a ball. We cupped the dough in our hands and put it on the table. We then put our palms on top of the dough and started moving it in circles. The table itself also helped us to make a sphere-like shape. Afterwards, we pressed the dough down really hard until it was flattened. We also learned the word “flat” and Kaia kept on repeating it after doing the activity. We put some sticks and poms poms and set the play dough on our ocean art. By doing so, we recognized that we’re actually making an island. It was so marvelous!!!

On our circle time, we talked about shapes and colors. We had a chart that we borrowed from Petals class.  In the chart, we saw red, blue, yellow and green and the shapes were circle, triangle and square. Amazingly, our teachers sang to the tune of “Brown, Brown bear, what do you see?” But this time, the lyrics went on something like this…

Blue circle, blue circle, what do you see?

I see a red circle, looking at me…

            And the song went on until we had learned all the colors and shapes. It was so fascinating because we were learning words by singing and playing with our teachers and friends.

After our snacks, we went upstairs again for our pool activity. We all put our sunscreen and hats on and got ready for another “splashy” adventure. In the pool, we saw some sea creatures and we recognized some of them. Last week, our theme topic was about the ocean and sea creatures. Toshiki was with us to sprinkle some water so that it will be more enjoyable for us. Thank you Toshiki and Goh! Thank you so much Ohana for a great day again! We really love being here and hope you’ll have a good day too!

Lots of love,

John, Goh and Toshiki