Rainbows and Praying Mantis

Dear Flower Class parents, On the main table this morning we saw all the green and red cards for Tohoku we marbled using nail polish last week. The nail polish has now dried and the cards look really nice. We needed to add some things inside the cards today and started off choosing one red and one green card each. Next to the cards we found two photos of our own faces and glued these into the cards below the Christmas message. We then chose a colored marker or sparkly pen and wrote our own names next to the photos. It was then time to add some last details to the front of our cards. We had 4 different stamps; a Christmas tree, a star, a holly leaf and 2 bells to choose from. We used a gold ink pad stamp and printed the designs onto the front along with the marbling. We also had some silver paint which we could use to print with as well. These cards will be sent off to Tohoku tomorrow along with all the Soul Train candy bags. On the second table we wanted to continue with our water powered dragster. We added the front wheels today as well as the bonnet area. We are up to part 19 of the 26 we need to complete the dragster and test it. We also started making birthday cards for our friends who have their birthdays in December. The birthdays are in the winter break and so we will celebrate their birthdays before the end of the term. On the carpet the wooden blocks and marbles were very popular. We put together lots of tracks and rolled the marbles down the tracks to the bottom. We were amazed to see that the pumpkin seeds we planted last week had sprouted over the weekend and grown to about 10 centimeters high. We could see some of the other seeds pushing up through the soil ready to come out. Wow! So very Fast! In the park we found a big green praying mantis. It was a bit scary looking and Ayaka kindly picked it up for us. When we looked closely we saw it had 6 legs, 2 big eyes on the sides of its head and big long front legs to catch its prey. When we came back to the classroom we had our weekly gym class with Miyashita Sensei. We warmed up our bodies by stretching and then practiced our balance on 1 leg with our arms out. We tried our balance on our bottoms with our legs and hands in the air and also the ‘Bridge pose’. We then had fun doing backwards rolls with Miyashita Sensei’s help and bunny hopped back to the starting position. It was then time for today’s Show & Tell. He had brought a great book called ‘Mix it Up’ which is all about mixing colored paint. The book shows how mixing colors makes new colors including lighter and darker colors. He also showed us 4 beautiful samples he had made on card. He told us how he had put paint on a plate and then mixed it up with a brush and then put card on top to transfer the paint to the card. He walked around proudly showing all his friends what he had made and then answered lots of questions from his friends including “How did you make those lines”? – “With a brush” and “Why did you put it on the plate”? – “I wanted to make a nice ocean picture” Well done, it was a great Show & Tell. In circle time we looked at a picture of a rainbow and helped make a rainbow picture. We needed to arrange lots of circular things in order of size by looking at which ones were a little bit bigger than the last one. We used some charcoal to make the grey clouds and then looked carefully to see which colors were actually in a real rainbow. We used some powdered pastels to rub our fingers in and then used the round objects to draw around. We will try our own pastel pictures later this week.

Have a great afternoon and we look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow.

All our love, Darren, Ayaka, Maki and Ryoan.