Baubles and beads and sparkly things

We all felt the change in temperature today and we were so happy to walk into our warm cozy classrooms for our day at school. Miya and Shoko told Shelley and Goh that we couldn’t go outside because it was raining; Shelley said that in this cold, she didn’t want to outside even if it was not raining. We spent a fun day inside, having quality time with our teachers and our friends and enjoying a relatively pressure free day with our schedule. Downstairs, we played on the mat and then all sat together at the small table for snack time as our activities were already laid on the table for later. It was lovely to sit close to one another and chat while we ate our snacks. At snack time we spoke about gender and that we were all girls at school today except for Tokutaro; he is a boy. We went around looking at everyone and then Miya said that she has a cousin in Germany who is a girl too. We said that mums were girls and dads were boys. After snack time we sat on the floor as we had a story which helped us understand why we were making a shiny decoration at our activity table. We also listened to “Smiley Shark” which has a book and a CD. We concentrated for a long time and love this story so much. We sang our “Hello” song and then Shelley told us a story about “David the dolphin” and “Wally the whale”. David was swimming in the ocean happily when suddenly his mood changed. He felt sad as he realized that it was the festive season and there were no sparkly decorations under the sea. Wally heard his crying and he told David that they should look on the ocean bed and maybe they could find something sparkly to use as a decoration. They did find something. They find a discarded CD which was a good thing and a bad thing. It was good that they found something sparkly, but bad that people throw garbage into the ocean. We all saw ourselves in the CD and learnt the word “reflection” today. We then went to the activity tables and decorated the reflective side of a CD with glitter paint, sparkly, colourful pom poms, sparkly shapes and foam shapes. We will use these as mobiles and hang them from the ceiling when they are dry. We also completed our hearts for Shoko’s birthday and she decorated her crown. Eva and Tokutaro did some threading as well. They really enjoy looking at the objects and Tokutaro remembered apple, car, star and airplane.

During circle time upstairs, we filled our flower pots with soil which went on top of the stones that we had already placed inside them, earlier in the week. We then closed our eyes and picked two seeds and said the magic word “Abracadabra”. Maybe our seeds will grow like the magic beans that Jack had. We pushed the seeds inside the soil, covered them with more soil and watered them. We will wait to see what flowers or plants will grow and we will take them home at the end of the term.  Both downstairs and upstairs, we played musical chairs. Downstairs, we all had a chair and had to sit on it when the music stopped. Upstairs, each time we removed one chair, until there was only one left. Noa was so quick and she ended up being the one who was sitting on the chair at the very end of the game.

In our book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, we noticed that the wings of the butterfly are symmetrical. They are exactly the same shape and have the same decorations on them. Our activity today was a follow on from this discussion. We selected some beautiful rhinestones for each wing of our butterfly decoration, and put them on both wings so that they looked the same. The top part of our decoration is made from the coloured cellophane pictures that we made during Autumn/Fall; the middle part of the decoration is a photo of our faces in a heart and the bottom is the butterfly. We hope that everyone has a great weekend, relaxing at home and staying dry and warm. Brrrrr……it is freezing outside!

Love Shelley, Darren, Goh and Kanako