Bugs, bugs and more bugs

It was so cold today and when we were outside in the park, as long as we were in the direct sunshine, it was warm however in the shade it was freezing. Brrrrrrr! We had a busy day both up and downstairs. Upstairs Jamie made his tree using brown paint and following the technique that his friends used yesterday. He blew through the straw with all his might and made many branches. He also attached tissue paper in shades of Autumn leaves and then sprayed them with water. Finn and Nico added more leaves to their trees together with Jamie. We hope that Beckett is feeling better and that he will be back again on Friday to celebrate Noa’s birthday with us all.

Today we had a floor piano which we loved playing with. You have to jump on the notes and they play the exact same notes as there are on a real piano. Kana is a great pianist and she tried to play a tune for his. She had to jump really quickly from one note to the other.

We focused on number in class today and played a game to see what numbers we knew from 1 to 20. After ten we have to try to remember two numbers together and this was challenging.  Our story was once again “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and we tried to remember how many fruits were eaten each day; which day the fruits were eaten on; and what fruit and vegetables the caterpillar ate. IN our “Body Rap” song, we sang and did the actions to it. We used our pretend remote controls and pushed the buttons to tell our friends what they had to do. We stood up; swam; rode a bicycle; ate ice cream and froze! We played bug dominoes at the table and had to match all the bugs. The bugs were cicadas, butterflies, beetles, ants, bees, ladybugs and caterpillars.

Downstairs we have been focusing on saying “Thank you” when our friends or teachers do things for us. We are also learning to say thank you in many different languages. Today we played a game where we did clapping or tapping or patting as we said “thank you” e.g. “arigatou” – we clapped the syllables that make up the word a-ri-ga-tou. Other words we said were “todah”; “merci”; “sheshe”; “danke”; “afgcharisto”; “takk” and of course “thank you”, which we all know. We used one of our beautiful Autumn coloured paintings and put all of our faces on it with thinking clouds, saying “thank you” in different languages. It is right at the door to our classroom so please take a look at it. We also pasted words onto our second painting.

Our story today was a rhyming one all about the ABC. We sat attentively and listened to Shelley read the entire book to us. The book is called “ABC Rhymes”. We love rhyming and our teachers think that the more we do these kinds of exercises the more it will help us when we learn to read.

We did two more activities at the tables today. The one was “heart” shaped wishes for Noah for his birthday which is at the end of the month and the other one was playing with play dough. We enjoyed touching the play dough much more than the paper clay from yesterday. We hope you all stay warm and enjoy the rest of the day.

Love Shelley, Darren, Goh, Marie and Kanako