Spring is here

We are so happy that the rain and cold yesterday didn’t chase all the sakura away. We had a great time playing outside in the park, enjoying the warm sunshine and running around with our friends and teachers. Miya collected a whole lot of beautiful cherry blossoms which we will try to use for art tomorrow morning. We had a busy morning at school with many different activities and many stories. In fact there was a man called Gary who came to talk to Shelley and he played two games with us. The first one was a counting and touching different parts of your body game. You had to count up to number seven touching first your head for number one; then your shoulders for number two; then your hips for number three; then your knees for number four and back up to your hips for number five; your shoulders for number six and then clap above your head for number seven. There was a great CD that played music and we copied the actions and said the numbers together. The next game was an adaptation of “Karta” which is a Japanese card game. Gary showed us four cards with pictures of animals on them. There was a tiger, a goldfish, a rhinoceros, and a giraffe. He put them face up and then he turned them over. Before he turned them over, he told us what animal we had to find. So we tried to keep our eyes focused on that specific card. Noa said that she knew where the goldfish was and……………..she was right! Well done Noa! These were fun games. Tokutaro and Gento spent time playing with the magnetic puzzles. They used the rods with magnets to pick up the pieces and they tried to put them back into the puzzles without using their hands. Nico and Tokutaro built a tower with the plastic coloured shapes. They took turns to place the pieces on top of one another.

Darren read the book “The Surprise Garden” today. It is all about planting seeds and growing them into vegetables. We dramatized digging a hole in the soil for the seeds; we planted the seeds; we watered them and then we watched them as they grew. In this story they grew cauliflowers, carrots, beans, squash, peas, watermelon and sunflowers. At the end of the story Darren asked us what vegetable or fruit was our favourite one. Miya said hers was watermelon; Tokutaro’s was beans; Nico liked watermelon; Emily liked peas and Gento like watermelon too. We said the poem “Round and round the garden” and held a friend’s hand when we did this. We played the Wiggles CD and sang ‘Do the monkey’ and then played the butterfly song. We linked our thumbs and made our hands look like butterflies. We flew around and then landed on different parts of our bodies e.g. knees, shoulders etc.

You can see that today we decorated another butterfly. This time we used double sided tape and foam shapes. Double sided tape is easy to stick on as you just have to put something on it and it sticks. You do not need a glue brush or anything like that. We have now made four beautiful butterflies with different collage materials.

Tomorrow is another KIDFIT day. Keeping fit is so much fun and doing exercises with our friends and teachers is even more fun. Have a great afternoon in the warm sunshine.

Love Shelley, Darren, Sabine and Kana