Happy Birthday Oliver
Nico came back today! Yay! We were happy to see him upstairs when we went there to celebrate Oliver’s party and we also saw him outside. We know that it was warm in the Philippines so coming back to Tokyo and 
the cold weather must have been quite a shock for him and his family. We were glad that he came back today as it was Oliver’s birthday party, and Oliver and Nico are good friends.
Oliver’s actual birthday was yesterday so he is now three years old and one day. Happy Birthday Oliver! For Oliver’s party, we all sat together in a circle on the mat and he sat on the chair. He didn’t want to wear his crown at this time, however when we went to the table and lit his candles, he wore it. We started off by singing our “Hello” song as we had not sung it yet this morning. Afterwards we asked Oliver, how old he was and he showed us three fingers. We all held up three fingers and then counted up to three in English, Japanese, German and French. We sang “Oliver is three years old today” and then stood up to sing “When you’re happy and you know it”. We clapped our hands, stamped our feet, nodded our heads, blinked 
our eyes and shouted “Happy Birthday”. At the very end of the song we whispered “Happy birthday” and then we sat down. We all know that when it is a birthday, the person who is celebrating, usually receives presents. We always make a present for our friends and we made a chain of stars for Oliver, filled with decorations and messages from us. He opened up the beautiful gift envelope that Kana had made, and pulled the stars out. There were so many.
Oliver and his mom can read them when he gets home and maybe he can hang them in his room. Oliver called his friends one by one to come and join him at the table and everyone sat down together to feast on fruit tarts, cookies and strawberries. Some of us had some space in our tummies for our own snacks and ate a few pieces of them. The rest of us were too full from all the 
treats. We want to say a big thank you to Oliver and his mum, Susan for the celebration that we had today.
At the end of the week, we are having Sophie’s party so it will be another snack time with treats! During the morning, downstairs we did an activity for the New Year. In Japan, the traditional colours for New Year are red, pink and white. For Chinese New Year the special colours are red and gold. The pictures that we made today were with red and gold markers and red and gold collage materials. We had gold origami paper shapes, gold ribbon, gold sparkles, red foam shapes, red sparkles and red 
origami paper shapes. We also used red and gold glitter paint which we spread all over the pictures with our fingers. It was fun to draw with our fingers. They are drying now and later on, we will paste them into our Portfolios.
Outside it was really freezing today (we think more for our teachers than ourselves). We ran about kicking balls, and spent time digging in the sand box with children from schools in the neighbourhood. Stay warm this afternoon!
Love Shelley, Darren, Kana, Goh and Marie