Bye bye Nick and Walker

It turned out to be such a beautiful sunny day. We saw some people walking in the street with umbrellas and thought that we would not be able to go and play outside but “out came the sun and dried up all the rain”. We sang “Oh Mr. Sun please shine down on me” when we saw the sunshine through the window.

Downstairs we started off our day happily and sadly. We were really happy to sit at the table and make something special for our friend Walker but we were sad because it is his last day at Ohana. He and Nick and their family will soon be going to live in India and we will miss them so much. We each chose a special colour of coloured paper and drew on it with markers. Then we took a photo of our face and pasted it onto the same piece of paper. Lastly we pasted some shapes and other coloured paper onto our page. Some of our friends are not at school today so we made extra pictures for them. Then our teaches laminated the paper and Shelley wrote a message to Walker from us all. She attached a ring to the cards we made so that he can have a special book, remembering his time at Ohana International School.

 In our morning circle time we spoke about our hands and different things that we can touch in the classroom. The wooden toys are hard; the whiteboard is smooth and hard and also cold; the white fur is soft and tickles your skin; the tissue paper is light and we can blow it up into the air; the felt is heavy and drops to the ground really quickly; the cellophane paper is smooth and light and we can also blow it in the air. The other thing about the coloured cellophane was that when we all looked through it, everything was red. It was interesting for our teachers because just before we played a game with the cellophane, we sang the song: “If you’re wearing red, stand up” and then we did it with the colour green. The reason for this was because we are continually reviewing colours and other concepts and we all had our green or red T-shirts on to go to the park. So when some of us looked through the cellophane, which was red, we knew which of our friends had green T-shirts; so when Shelley asked us what colour our friends were, we answered in relation to their T-shirts and not the cellophane.

Upstairs we discovered some new animal pictures on the light box. We had frogs, butterflies, gorillas, ants and tigers. Today is Nick’s last day with us at Ohana so we made a special train card for him. We decorated it and gave it to him at the end of circle time. We each gave him a big hug and also had popcorn for our snack time treat. We are always sad to say goodbye to our friends as each of us has a special place in our teachers’ hearts and there is always a space both literally and figuratively, when someone leaves. We wish Nick, Walker and their mum and dad, a safe trip to India and good luck at their new school.

 In the library we read a book called “Hide Horace”. It was about a chameleon that had trouble changing colour and this put him in a lot of danger. Today we went back to our paintings that we made yesterday. These were our pattern paintings. Our teachers asked us the question: “what has a pattern like this?” and they would show everyone a piece of paper with a pattern on it. We then went to the table and cut out the shape of an animal that had a certain pattern on its body. Once we had cut them out, we pasted them onto the large jungle scene. We danced to the song “The monkey dance” and then used our remote controls to ‘control’ our friends and teachers. In the afternoon, we learnt the sound of the letter “n”. We practiced making the shape of the letter on white boards and paper. We also made an “n” poster with the words nose, neck, noodles etc. on a large piece of paper.

Downstairs we all slept so soundly and our teachers lay down with us to help us quieten our bodies. They sometimes tell us that we are so lucky to be able to rest in the middle of the day; they would like to rest too.

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