Michal's baby shower

It was Michal’s surprise party today and it really was a surprise for her. All of our mums and especially Ava’s mum, Christine, kept the party a big secret and when Christine sent our mums a letter on the computer, she left out Michal so she wouldn’t know about it. While some of our mums were preparing for the surprise party, we all were downstairs together playing and singing. We sang “Row your boat”. We made two boats and sat with our legs open behind our friends. We danced to “The Monkey dance” which is an all-time favourite of most children in Ohana. We did “The Body Rap” song and we read the book called “Monkey Puzzle” comparing how many legs, arms etc. a monkey has in relation to ourselves. During the morning we had our Fire and earthquake drills. We usually do not prepare for these things as they happen incidentally and accidentally but today our teachers explained to us that if there is an earthquake or a fire, we need to evacuate the building which we now know means leave the building. If there is a fire we need to cover our mouths so that our lungs do not get full of smoke as this will be bad for our breathing. So you can see from the photos that we came down the stairs with our hands covering our mouths pretending that there was a fire. For our earthquake drill we go under the table and then we also walk down the stairs. It is safer for us to walk down the stairs and the other reason is that sometimes elevator’s stop and you cannot use them.

   Our little friends downstairs walked down the stairs too but it was a lot harder for them to cover the mouths as well. We were outside together in the park and had to co-ordinate things really well so that we were on time for the party at 12pm. When we all returned from the park, we had snack time and then the children in Shelley and Nanako’s class went upstairs for KIDFIT while Darren and Ayaka’s children came downstairs to have their snack. We spent part of the day swopping classrooms. Our KIDFIT class continued to teach us about our lungs and today Jet our teacher had a toy that looked like lungs so that he could explain to us what happens when we breathe in and breathe out. The lungs inflate which means get bigger when we breathe out and when we breathe in, they deflate which means get smaller. We breathed deeply raising our arms in the air. We used the inflated basket balls to bounce, catch and kick. We used the bottles filled with soapy orange water to do some arm exercises and they also became trumpets and harmonicas. We also used beautiful see through scarves which we used to make circles with, we blew them in the air and we waved them above our heads.

     We did plenty of stretching and moving our bodies and we remembered some very important things that Jet taught us. In order to have good healthy lungs and strong bodies we need to eat healthy food, so exercises and have enough sleep. We received a sheet of paper after our KIDFIT class with things for us to do at home. When we had all completed our KIDFIT classes we spent the time together in the classroom downstairs. When the room upstairs was all set up we walked quietly up the stairs as Michal had already arrived and was waiting downstairs…..thinking that she was going out for lunch. But she was actually coming to have lunch with us. We all sat really quietly and when she walked in the door we shouted “surprise”! She really was surprised. We had a wonderful lunch with her and some mums who helped prepare our delicious food and had the time to come and join us. We presented her with a gift for her baby girl which was chosen by Miyuki, Tokutaro’s mum. We want to thank our families who contributed to the gift and the lunch. We appreciate your generosity and kindness always. We would also like to take this opportunity to wish our Jewish families “Shana Tova Umetukah”; have a sweet and happy New Year. The start of the Jewish New Year is on Sunday night. Wishing everyone a wonderful long weekend and we look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday for the start of another week of school. Thanks for a great day today.

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