Let the sunshine

It was a lovely day with a small group of children in each class as some of our friends are still sick. We were happy to see some of our friends return to school….Yay! We miss them when they are not at school and now with Golden Week coming, many of our friends and their families are leaving for a vacation. We think that Ohana will be really small next week in both the morning and afternoon classes. School is closed on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for Golden Week. Downstairs we continued working on our Coy Nobori. At the moment they are only paintings with prints in the shape of a flower, spiral, sun and butterfly with glitter. Today we added glitter paint to them and they are really sparkly and shiny. Gento did his printing today and he also made the eyes for his fish. We loved the activity using circles of different sizes. Shelley thinks that this is a good way for us to learn our shapes. We loved seeing how the small ones fitted inside the bigger one. She held the eyes up to her face and looked really funny. We had a really big surprise when we walked into the classroom this morning. There were balloons that said “Happy Birthday” on them. We played with them during the entire morning and realized that they come from Moko. She was given a party at one of her taiko classes last night and she left them at Ohana for us. Eva kept on saying: “They are from Moko!” We did some drawings on the large pink heart as well as some small hearts for Yossi’s birthday in June. Outside was warm and sunny and we spent the time watering the flowers; observing ants and seeing the yellow powder on the flowers that the bees collect when they go back to their hive and make honey.

Upstairs we decorated hearts for Yossi’s birthday too. We used small stamps and sparkly pens. We have been working on our printed leaf pictures for a few weeks and today we decided to make a butterfly and attach it to the pictures. We used clear plastic with cellophane stars, triangles and squares. We then used butterfly stickers to complete them.

In the library we read many books with our teachers. We love reading books and listening to stories. We especially enjoy reading the same ones over and over again. This is really good for us as our teachers can read the same book to us, and each time we can learn something new from the story. Today we looked at the book “Grow flower grow” and compared what the little girl gave the plant to eat, to what we feed our plants. Her plant didn’t grow when she fed it pizza, ice cream, cookies etc; however our plants have been growing every since we planted seeds. We gave the seeds good soil with some nutrition in it and then we fed them with water on a regular basis. And ours have grown so big and tall. After this discussion, we dramatized scenes from “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. We curled up like an egg; then we crawled around like a caterpillar; then we rolled our friends inside a blanket as if they were a caterpillar inside a cocoon and then we stood up and waved our arms like a butterfly. We loved rolling up inside the blanket. We are all smiling and laughing and felt all snug “like a bug in a rug”.

We wanted to wish Darren good luck as he is having a wisdom tooth out this evening. We hope that it is not too painful and that he will rest tonight and be well enough to come to school tomorrow.

Love Shelley, Darren, Kana and Goh