Chasing sakura snowflakes

It was a really gorgeous sunny day in the park and we spent our time collecting sakura petals from the ground; chasing after sakura snowflakes and trying to catch them as they were falling down; filling containers up with water for our sand and water play and of course playing with balls. Ren and Shelley started collecting sakura petals and then Sui decided that she also wanted to collect some. Nico and Ren independently went to the tap and filled their containers of water a number of times. Shelley was happy to watch them and allow them the freedom to do it on their own. They carried the containers back to the sand box each time and continued with their imaginative games. In our morning circle we played two number games. The one was in teams of two; we had one cup; one tweezer and some plastic thimbles. We first played a game and sang a song so that we would know how to use the tweezers. We used our pointer finger and our thumb and squeezed them together and sang “Squeeze your fingers, squeeze them tight, squeeze them tight, tight, tight, tight, squeeze your fingers, squeeze them tight, as tight as can be”. Each of us had a turn to do this using the tweezers so we knew how to use them. Then we set about playing the game and filling our cups up with as many plastic thimbles as we could. In the end Noah and Sui had nine and Ren and Nico had seven. Ren told us that seven was less than nine. We then played with an abacus which has different coloured discs on wire and long ago people used them to count. We started off with different amounts of discs on each of our rows and then we made them equal by adding more discs.

We sang songs about nature and spoke a lot about trees and roots. In fact when we were in the park, collecting sakura petals, we walked behind the small yellow slide and noticed roots growing above the ground. This was a little surprising as we thought that roots grow below the ground. Shelley said that sometimes when people put things on top of the area where roots grow, trees push their roots up so that they can get more room. Just like we don’t like having things on top of us that stop us from growing, the roots of the trees are the same.

We dramatized “I am a little flower” and while we were curled up like tiny seeds, Shelley sang “I hear thunder” and “Good morning Mr. Sun” because seeds need water and sunshine so that they can grow. Then we grew and danced together.

In these two photos, Ren and Noah were creating a tower with all the Kapla blocks. Their first attempt crashed before they had used up all the blocks however their second attempt was successful. Here they are working together as a team and finally, “We did it, Yay”! Today’s morning circle included our regular good morning songs, changing the date and day on the wooden calendar and playing some other listening games and rhymes. We stayed with the theme of nature and trees and made trees at the activity table. We used brown paint and tried to make branches by blowing the paint through straws. We also tipped the paper sideways so the paint could run down and make a branch. Then we painted the trunk of the tree. Shelley told us that the trunk of a tree is like our bodies and the branches of the tree are like our arms. On the branches there are leaves, flowers and sometimes fruit. Little creatures live in trees like insects and ants. We saw ants on the ground when we were looking for sakura petals. We have to be careful as ants are so small and we can stamp on them!

Love

Shelley and Darren