Our bodies make music

We welcomed Nicholas and Walker and their mum, Mayra to Ohana today. We had a great day with them and look forward to seeing them every week on Tuesdays and Thursday.

It was a hot day in the park and we were very happy to be under the umbrella while we were outside. Downstairs we went to the park later than usual as we welcomed Walker and he needed time to enjoy being in our classroom; exploring the room with its toys and games. He spent time at the play dough table however his favourite thing was cooking. He opened the oven and took plates, cups and cutlery out and put them in the sink to wash. While he was doing this, the rest of us were having a picnic with a big selection of food to choose from. Allie was the one who did the cooking while Eva, Tokutaro and Lily sat and waited to be served. Vincent spent most of the time playing with the play dough and then as always, when we started packing away, he came to help us. He is very good at packing away and he does this even if he has not played with the toys. We did bead threading, colour matching and play dough at the tables during free play time. Later in the day, Tokutaro did a really difficult puzzle of a girl. It has five puzzles in one starting with the skeleton, muscles, organs, skin and clothing.

 We played a matching game together with cards that have different pictures on them. We recognise most of the things on the cards. When we had completed matching them all; we stood up and held hands in a circle. We sang “Let’s hold hands in a circle” and then we said “good morning” in different languages. We did a number of actions e.g. jumping, blinking, swaying, stretching, wriggling our noses, trying to touch our nose with our tongues, puffing our cheeks and then sleeping. We always love pretending to sleep and we shout: “Wake up!” We sang our “Hello” song and “Open them, shut them”; “If you should meet an elephant”; “Monkey, monkey sitting in a tree” and “There’s a little green frog”. We read books at story time and enjoyed listening to “Mummies are for counting stars”. We are focusing on looking at our facial features and Shelley is going to do an experiment with us tomorrow using mirrors. We will look at our faces and find the different collage materials that will represent our facial features and make our very own faces. She sometimes plans things and we don’t always follow her plan. She says that this is a learning experience for all of us and that it is the process that is more important than the product.

Upstairs, we decorated hearts for FJ’s birthday next week. We can’t believe how many September birthdays we have. During circle time we played a body parts listening game. We listened to instructions e.g. “Put your hands on your head” and then did the action. We did this with many different parts of our bodies and then we gave instructions to our friends and teachers. We also played a foot Charades game. We stood behind a piece of dark fabric and moved our feet; our friends had to try to guess what we were doing with our feet. We laughed a lot during this game. Our friends danced, jumped, climbed, walked etc.

     We played a game on the mat using a selection of wooden shapes. Some were long and straight; some were short and straight; some were large curves and some were small curves. All of these shapes are parts of letters of the alphabet e.g. one long straight piece and three short straight pieces become the letter E; One long straight piece and one short curve becomes the letter P etc.

Another activity that we did at the table was cutting strips into different shapes. We cut strips and circles and then pasted them onto a piece of paper which is the start to creating a body collage. Outside in the park Noa played soccer and then had a race with FJ using the elephant feet. Nico, Jennifer, Oliver and Nicholas collected water from the tap in a variety of containers and made a huge lake of sand and water in the sandbox. Miya and Shoko spent time drawing crosses on the ground using the long blue wickets. Darren and Ayaka asked Miya and Shoko what they were drawing and they replied: “Hopscotch”. They then proceeded to jump on all of the crosses they had drawn in the sand.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Christine, Nanako, Sabine, Ayaka and Goh.