Christmas is a time of love

It was a lovely sunny day outside in the park and we had a great time playing “What’s the time Mr. Wolf?” We had two friends from Shanghai playing with us as they came to visit Shelley today. She taught Lili who is seven years old and her sister Leni, is five years old. They each had a turn to be the wolf and they played Tag with us as well. We enjoyed being outside even though it was quite cold. When we came back into our classrooms they were so inviting; warm and cosy and it was great to be able to take off our jackets and be “snug like a bug in a rug”! Downstairs, we missed seeing Shoko as she was sick. We hope that she feels better soon and will be back with us on Friday. Upstairs we decorated our small Christmas Tree with wooden dolls, sleighs, snowmen, toys, Santa’s, red bows and ornaments. We worked in two groups with one group decorating the tree and the other group making special pictures for Finn’s farewell book. When we were all finished making our drawings, we swapped and the second group put special Christmas lights on the tree as well. When we switched the lights on, we were amazed because the lights changed from red to blue to white to pink. We love having our own sparkly Christmas tree in our classroom. We also decorated the room with beautiful shiny hanging decorations. We could chose which ones we wanted to use and we also chose exactly where we wanted them positioned in the classroom. We now have two trees in our school; one upstairs and one downstairs with both of them representing the festivities that take place at this time of year; in their own way.

When we selected the things that we wanted to hang in the classroom we were surprised because they were really long. Some of them go from one side of the room to the other. We were thinking of taking our leaves down from the ceiling but we just completed the “castle in the clouds” so we will leave them up a bit longer together with the Christmas decorations. During circle time we sang “1, 2, 3, 4, 5 once I caught a fish alive” and we learnt the first few lines of “Jingle Bells”. We read a book called “Christmas Rhyme Time”. Downstairs we also read a book about Christmas called “The First Christmas” by Father Christmas. We know how Shelley loves books with morals and deep messages and this one has to be one of her favourites. Father Christmas told the story about a baby being born in Bethlehem; and how the shepherds followed a beautiful bright star to see him. The message that Father Christmas said, came from this story was that Christmas is about love and not only presents. The end of the story was when all the animals went with him back to his house to prepare for Christmas. This was a really beautiful story. In one of the photos in our journal today, you will see Goh san on the floor with Tokutaro and Miya. We listened to the story called “Smiley Shark” and then they decided to dive under the ocean so that they could see the fish and other sea creatures. They took the puppets too and ended up swimming with an octopus, a squid, a dolphin, a whale, and a turtle. Their activities today were threading, making pictures for Finn and cutting with the squiggly scissors. Miya actually told Shelley that she wants to rather use the “normal” scissors next time.

Love Shelley, Darren, Goh, Marie and Kanako