A cold and rainy day

The month of December, Christmas lights, Channukah candles, presents, Christmas trees, magical nights and the end of 2010 is now upon us. We are preparing our very own decorations for our trees and are having so much fun, spending time together with our friends all in the same classroom. Today was a cold and rainy day and inside our classroom, it was warm and sunny with our smiles of joy. We sang our “Hello” song and everyone was able to sing their names. We also sang “Five little candles” and each time we blew one candle out until there were no more candles left. We also sang “Five little leaves” and did actions. We love making a noise and blowing like the wind so that the leaves fall down. We danced and did actions to the music on the Wiggles CD and especially loved the song called “Do the monkey”. We have to pretend that we are monkeys, then tigers and then elephants. When we are monkeys, we move our arms up and down and say “ooh ah”; when we are tigers, we roar and show scary faces to one another and when we are elephants, we make a long trunk with our arms. We loved shaking our sillies out, wiggling our woggles, nodding our noddies, jumping our jiggles, clapping our crazies and stretching and yawning. We walked, jumped and ran and we sat together and sang ‘Where is thumbkin’ at the end.

In our morning circle time that we all did together, we spoke about the days of the week and Shelley sang a song, using a quiet voice. When she came to Thursday, she used a loud voice so that we could guess that today is Thursday. Then she showed us one finger as it is the first of the month and the last song she sang was one with the 12 months of the year and once again, she changed her pitch and tone when she sang the month which is, December. We looked out of the window and Oliver told us that we couldn’t go to the park, as it was raining and really cold outside. Shelley chose a book called “The Snowy Day”. When it snows, it is even colder than today however you can still have fun, like Peter in the story did. He made footprints in the snow and climbed up a big pile of snow. He did many other fun things, but he was sad when he came home. He had placed a snowball inside his pocket, and when he arrived home, it was no longer there. Finn told us that the snow had melted and that is why there was no longer a snowball in his pocket.

We had a number of activities to do at the table; one was making Shoko chan’s birthday wishes and the other was decorating snowflakes for our tree downstairs.  We made hearts for Shoko chan and decorated them with markers and stamps. We decorated the snowflakes with rhinestones and glitter paint. They are beautiful and sparkly and we look forward to everyone seeing our tree when it is finished.

We had another activity where we had to thread shapes onto laces. There were many different shapes e.g. strawberries, stars, airplanes, teddy bears, cars, butterflies etc. We threaded them onto a lace and filled it up with the shapes. We spent time playing on the mat enjoying playing with the many different toys that we have. We love the lego with the animals and trains. Oliver especially loved making a train and putting the animals in a row. We all shared our toys really well and helped pack away at the end of our play time.

Ten chan, the beautiful monk who took toys to Iwate, came to visit us today and he said that we can collect more things for the children and their families in Miyagi, which is another place that he is visiting and donating things to. We will collect things in the New Year.

Love Shelley, Darren, Sabine and Kanako