Friends and fun at Ohana

It was such a busy Monday morning at school today. We welcomed Marie and her one son, Tadeus, who had a free day today and we also welcomed Sabine back from Germany. She came back yesterday and brought a friend with her to say hello to us when we were in the park. We were happy to have so many visitors and friends in our school and this was a great start to the last week of this term. We are also excited to welcome Isabelle who will be starting school at the beginning of the new term. She came to visit us one day last week and really liked our school.

Upstairs we did a check to see if our toys were placed in the correct containers. Sometimes when we play we like to mix everything so when we pack up, it is important that we check to see if everything is in the right container. Our action songs today were “I am a little flower” where we sang and dramatized a seed  growing in the soil, becoming a flower. We then sang “Ring a ring of roses” and the last song where we use lots of energy and actions was called “The Body Rap”. We love moving our bodies, doing exercises each day.

After we read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, we played a game using props that were similar to things from the story. We found a leaf printing from Noa and used that as the leaf; we made an egg using white clay and rolled it into a ball; then we found a small caterpillar and then we found a really big caterpillar. Each time when something else was introduced from the story, we closed our eyes and then opened them again. Then we were introduced to the letter “B” in its upper case form. We learnt that if you fold a piece of paper in half, dry the letter “B” on one side of the paper and cut it out, when you open up the folded paper, the shape is just like a butterfly. We helped cut out a large “B” with our teachers.

We also played with the giant inflatable net and plastic that we will eventually cut up and use for art work. It has a large hole in it so we cannot inflate it. It is made out of many colours and when our teachers asked us what we would like to make with the green part of it, we all thought that it would be great as a leaf.

The first photo here is of Ten chan and Yasuyo san when they came to collect the toys on Friday evening. They loved spending time at Ohana playing with Hanna here who was dressed up as a chef. Ten chan had to make two trips to Ohana as his van was so full. He went all the way back to Saitama in the rain and came back to collect the remaining toys that night. He is so grateful to everyone at Ohana for their generosity and kindness whenever he asks for something. In the second picture Yossi, Tokutaro and Emily are all dressed up and ready to go somewhere!

During the morning we sang our regular greeting songs and did actions before we started singing; then we sang “Five little clouds” and “Five little leaves”. We love finger games and counting how many do we have left etc. Sophie and Emily helped us count correctly each time a cloud or a leaf disappeared.

We had some interesting things from nature to look at through a magnifying glass. We noticed that they had many different patterns and colours on them. When we used the magnifying glass, the patterns and the objects became bigger. We played with shells, acorns, bark, stones, flowers, leaves, marbles, a chestnut and some leaves inside plastic. The leaves inside the plastic feel smooth however the other ones are rough to the touch. We missed Gento today and hope he is feeling better so that he will come to school tomorrow.

Love Shelley, Darren, Goh, Kana and Marie