Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar

It was so cold today, we were really happy to stay inside and do exercises in our classrooms to keep us fit. Going outside is so much fun but not really when we have to dress in our coats and beanies and mittens and squeeze into our school T-shirts. Even though we are warmly dressed we can still feel that cold on the parts of our bodies that are not covered up! So today upstairs we did the “Body Rap” and downstairs we did many songs from our ‘Wiggles CD’; Walk on your way to school; Come on let’s jump; Shake your sillies out and wiggle your woggles away; Where is Thumbkin; Butterflies; Hot Potato and then at the very end of it all we hid. We curled up into tiny, little balls and kept quiet while listening to soothing music. Upstairs after we had completed the “Body Rap”, we sang “Jingle Bells”. We read two books with Darren and Kana today. The one you have heard us mention before, it is called “Joseph had a little overcoat”. Today we read the story and we also cut the pieces from an origami model, just as the story told us. First we had an overcoat made from origami; then we cut it into a jacket; then we cut it into a vest etc. Each time the paper became smaller and smaller and we could see it happening right before our very own eyes. It was fun to be able to actualize it!

Our second story was called “Snow is falling” and we dramatized snow falling in our classroom. We sat on the floor and our teachers dropped snowflakes down and they drifted slowly to the ground. Some even fell onto our bodies. They are so light, we could hardly feel them when they touched our bodies. In the story, the snow falls everywhere and covers paths, roads, trees etc. At the activity tables, we made mitten greeting cards by tracing our hands with closed fingers onto a piece of red or green cardboard. We decorated them with glitter and chose one beautiful charm to put in the middle; either a shooting star or an angel.

Downstairs, we made the flames for our candles using red cellophane paper. We all looked through the red paper and saw that the whole world was red; our friends and teachers were red. We crinkled the cellophane and put sticky tape onto the toilet roll candle for it. While we were playing on the carpet earlier in the morning, we decided to all be babies and go to sleep. We took our blankets and pillows and lay down quietly. Some of us even pretended to cry like a baby.

We did threading onto laces which we love doing. This activity has become standard for us each day and is really good for our fine motor control and eye hand co-ordination. We are learning vocabulary through the many different objects that we have to thread e.g. apple, airplane, butterfly, train, cherry, teddy bear etc. This morning we also did some Yoga poses all by ourselves. Some of us know these poses from our mums and their Yoga classes. The pose that we did is called the “dog pose” and we were all able to put our bottoms into the air and keep our legs and arms straight. Our story today was called “Rain, rain everywhere”. It was about some mice who didn’t listen to their mommy and they got caught in a big storm. They didn’t know where to find shelter and all the animals who offered to help them lived in houses that were not suitable for them. In the end their mommy found them and they invited the other animals to their oak tree where they were safe. We played a matching game and were really good at it. We also had some left over cookies from our baking, for snack time. While we were eating the cookies, Shelley sang the song "Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar". She went through all of our names and we sat there, entranced, waiting to hear our names. We will learn how to sing the song as well.

Love Shelley, Darren, Goh, Marie and Kanako