New smocks for winter time

Yay! The sun is shining and even though it is not so warm, just feeling it’s brightness was wonderful when we went outside to the park. We did some more planting when we were there. On either side of the flowers that we planted last week, we planted two little rose plants which Miyuki gave to us when we celebrated Tibetan New Year. Shelley noticed that they were not surviving so well inside the classroom and thought that maybe being outside in the rich soil, among nature and other plants, they will grow more. We will wait and see and of course, enjoyed digging in the brown earth once again. Nico and Noah were responsible for the digging and planting today. Thanks Nico and Noah. Inside we had an interesting discussion following up the one we had last week, on the three colours up on the wall and what we think they are. Shelley read part of the documentation to us and then we spoke about what sort of things we can find in the earth. Miya said that you can find a caterpillar under the earth and Shelley wanted to know what the caterpillar starts off as before it becomes a caterpillar. Oh, this was a bit confusing because a caterpillar is one of the few creatures in nature that starts off as one thing, hatches and ends up as something completely different. The word “egg” came to mind because upstairs we have been reading and dissecting the story called ‘A very hungry caterpillar’. We thought that it would be a good idea to make an egg and paste it on the wall where the documentation is. After a long discussion which will be added to the one on the wall, we ended up negotiating about where the egg should go. Shoko said it belonged in the soil and Miya and Noah thought it belonged on the grass. However we only had one ‘egg’. The consensus was that we make another one so that Shoko could put her one in the soil and Noah could put his one in the grass. We made the eggs by using a white tissue and squeezing it. We all had a turn to squeeze them while our friends sang the squeezing song:

Squeezing x 4

Squeezing tight

Make it small x 2

Squeeze it tight x 2

At the activity table, we rolled white tissue paper into balls and they became our eggs that we placed on our individual pictures. We briefly spoke about what we see in the sky and then each of us had a turn to hold one of our little clouds on sticks and dramatise the words of the songs. When one little cloud floated away, one of us moved our cloud so that it disappeared!

We sang our “hello” song and instead of clapping as we usually do, we used just our pointer fingers and did the same actions as we do when we clap. We laughed a lot when we did this. The motivation for doing this was from the “pointer finger” which Shelley uses with her students in the afternoons. We all were able to make our one hand look exactly like the stick with the “pointer finger” on it.

We are now wearing our new smocks for outside. We will be wearing these in the winter over our jackets so that we can identify ourselves in the park. In summer we will continue to wear our Ohana T-shirts.

Love Shelley, Darren, and Kana