Happy Australia Day

It was a busy day with nine children downstairs and three teachers. We were so lucky to be able to spend time together and play with and learn from one another. Allie, Nico’s sister came to school for the first time. She was happy and drew a picture on a heart for Emily’s birthday and then she made another picture. She stayed for a short time and enjoyed watching us do music. We started off our day completing our hearts for Emily’s birthday. She will be three on Monday and we are celebrating her birthday on that day. Emily sent some time decorating her crown so that she can wear it on the day. We look forward to celebrating with her and her family on Monday. While some of us were decorating our hearts, the rest of us were playing on the mat; reading books and playing with the Ampaman blocks. We have some tricky shapes that you have to maneuver carefully in order to take them off their wooden stand; then you have to maneuver them further when you put them back in the puzzle. We have to be extremely patient when we are playing with this game. When all of us had completed our hearts, we sat together on the mat and had a story. It was a story called “Rooster’s off to see the world”. A beautiful, colourful rooster wanted to go and see the world but he felt sad because he was all alone. He invited some other animals to join him and initially they did. There were frogs, turtles, fish and cats. In the end everyone went home because they were hungry or didn’t have any  shelter. The rooster didn’t organize things very well; and in the end, he went home as well. Then we jumped like frogs; crawled really slowly like turtles, meowed like cats and crowed like a rooster: “Cock a doodle doo”. We also made our hands look like fish and we sang a song about fish that went like this:

“Fishes swim through water clear,

Birds fly up into the air

Little kittens softly creep

Little children go to sleep”.

The drawing on the right was done by Miya. It was her first drawing of a person. She said that it was her mum and all the lines on her legs are her skin. Well done Miya!

We then had a fun music and movement class doing movements to the Wiggles CD and singing some songs. The Wiggles are Australian so it was a great idea to play the CD on Australia Day. We sang our “Hello” song; “Where is Thumbkin”; “Twinkle, twinkle” and “ABC”. Sometimes we sing songs during the day when we are in a transition time e.g. when we are putting our jackets and shoes on for the park. This is when we become more spontaneous and everyone joins in.

We celebrated Australia Day by making Vegemite sandwiches and trying to eat them. We first smelt the Vegemite which has a really strong smell, and then we spread a little onto a piece of bread and ate it. Tokutaro ate it all up however the rest of us could only manage to eat a little. Gento ate his little piece with relish as you can see from the photo. We all pulled a funny face when Sabine took the jar around and put it near our noses so that we could smell it. Happy Australia Day!

We had a fun time in the park and created a ‘password’ for when we want to get out of the sandbox. You have to be more than three to get the password!

Love Shelley, Kana, and Sabine