Blue play dough

Our second day was just as great as our first day in Petals Class. We welcomed a new friend this morning and her name is Lina. Her big brother Ren started at Ohana International School when it first began in 2010. We met him too and he is so tall (almost catching up to Shelley in height) We enjoyed playing with Lina today and we look forward to seeing her again on Thursday.When we arrived at school, we saw that there was the placemat activity at one of the tables and play dough at another table. Lina needed to make her placemat and every day when our friends arrive for their first day of the year; they too will need to make their placemats. We remembered that it was the same blue play dough that we made with our teachers the day before. It was wonderful to be able to touch it, squeeze it, roll it, cut it etc and this time, it was cold; yesterday when we touched the play dough it was hot and we couldn’t really play with it.

We also had drawing at the office table, however one of our favourite things to do at school today, was make the people puzzles. We have a layered boy and girl puzzle. The first layer is the skeleton, the next layer is the muscles, the third layer is the organs and the last two layers are the skin and then clothing. We have to put clothes on when we go out and can only be without clothes when we swim or take a bath and a shower. Hisami played the small piano with us starting off with do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. Each of us had a turn to play one octave with all of these notes; using one finger. Then after that she asked us what we can play on the piano. She played “Twinkle, twinkle little star”, “Mary had a little lamb” and “Incy wincy spider”. She

asked us if we knew how to make the shape of a star and a spider which of course we did, so we made these shapes while we were singing the songs. We love learning about animals so the last thing that we did with the small piano was listen to the sounds of animals. Hisami showed us an elephant, lion and a frog and she asked us if they were large or small; how they moved e. g. fast or slow and she played a tune for each one on the piano. The one for the elephant was low and slow; the one for the lion was fast and the one for the frog gave us a feeling of jumping. Then she hid the animals away and played a tune and we tried to guess which animal the tune reminded us of……we were really good at guessing, especially Sofie. In fact, when we sang “Old MacDonald had a farm” Sofie was the most outspoken, and said all of the names of the animals as well as all of the sounds that they make.

Another activity that we did today was making clothes for our birthday people. We have a new birthday chart this year and it is made up of lots of people. The people are made from corks but they do not have faces or clothes on them. Today we put clothes on our people. We chose the clothes quite specifically e. g. long pants, dresses, high heels etc. Our teachers will print out our faces and dates of birth which will then be attached to our corks. We look forward to celebrating our birthdays during the year. At the very end of the day, we sat together at the activity tables and Shelley drew a shape on a piece of paper. Akari told her that she thought the shape looked like an onigiri. Shelley then drew eyebrows and Akari said that it looked like it was going to be onigiri chan. She was nearly right because it was going to be a face. We told her to add two eyes, a mouth, two ears and a nose. She added some extra detail e. g. nostrils underneath the nose, eyelashes, an eyeball and a pupil. We are looking forward to making our faces in class. Love always, all the children in Petals Class.