A sign in the park

This morning Oliver came in and saw the sparkly mitten holiday cards the other children had made yesterday and wanted to make one himself. He followed the directions perfectly and had a good laugh when he wanted to pour the glitter out carefully and it came out in one whole rush and covered his entire mitten card. Luckily we were able to collect it all up and put most of it back in the small pot. We had snack time together downstairs and it was so much fun being able to play with our friends on the second floor. After snack time we sang ‘jingle bells’ together and again looked at the book all about snow. We were amazed to see how the ‘blanket’ of snow helps creatures such as mice, chipmunks and worms survive the cold winter. They hibernate during winter which means that they stay inside their homes throughout the winter, with lots of food that they collect and store there. Sometimes we like to ‘hibernate” and stay inside our warm homes on really cold days too. We then played a quick dice rolling game and Finn asked if we could play the board game ‘Bus Stop’ which involves counting and rolling dice. We really enjoyed this but we soon realized that if we didn’t leave for the park soon we would not be able to play outside. It was a beautiful day and we noticed that next to where we planted the flowers in the park last week, there was a new sign. The sign says ‘Ohana International School’ and was erected by the city office as part of the ‘Adopt’ program where people can take some responsibility for public areas in their neighbourhoods. We helped clear away the fallen leaves amongst the flowers before playing.

Downstairs we had a great time singing the morning ‘Hello’ song and then did some great music activities with Kana and Sabine. We all chose musical instruments to play along to “The Hot Potato” song. We really enjoyed shaking the tambourines and bells for this one. We then went on to try ‘Shaky, Shaky’’, ‘Shake your Sillies Out’ and the ‘Fruit Salad” song. During free play time, we were on the mat with a variety of toys. Eva and Tokutaro compared their tummies and belly buttons. We are all curious about our bodies and love doing songs where we use different parts of our bodies; nodding our heads, shrugging our shoulders, blinking our eyes, clapping our hands, stamping our feet, clicking our fingers (even though we don’t make a sound when we do this), tapping our knees, and bending our knees.

Love Darren, Shelley, Goh, Sabine and Kanako