Happy Birthday Ava
Today we ended up staying indoors but not because we didn’t want to go outside, rather, we were having such a wonderful time being together on the second floor, we were happy to stay indoors. We started off in separate classes and then just before snack time, we all 
joined forces and spent the rest of the day together until lunch time. We had so much fun together; dressing up in dress up costumes, drawing, playing with toys, playing imaginatively with our friends and chatting to our friends and teachers. The main reason for us getting together was that it was Ava’s birthday today. Her actual birthday was yesterday however she doesn’t come to school on a Monday so we delayed celebrating with her for one day. We all started off by working on our sweet potato collage. Today we pasted pieces of yarn, leaves, and green and brown tissue paper on to it. Now we can see the vines where the sweet potatoes grow on, the dirt, the leaves and some flowers. We will make 3D sweet potatoes later in the week and attach them to the collage. Ava completed decorating her crown. She added some stickers and she coloured in with sparkly pens. She sat with Shelley who was making a rainbow number three to stick onto the crown. The table was laid with beautiful birthday plates, cups, napkins, and hats and then we started her party.
We first held hands together in a circle and sang our action song where we stamp, kick our legs, jump, blink, nod etc. Then we asked 
Ava to go and sit on the special chair with her mum, Christine. We looked at Ava and noticed that she looked really special today. She had on a beautiful dress with princess and fairy frills and she had a sparkly top on as well. But we thought that something was missing. Ah! Miya said that she needed a crown so she went to get it and placed it gently on her head. Now she looked like the birthday girl. We asked Ava how old she was and she showed us three fingers. We counted three in English, Japanese, German, Spanish and Chinese. We sang ‘Ava is three years old today’ and then we all held up three fingers and sang our candle song. Each verse has a line that tells you to blow one candle out and then there is one less. We love to blow our fingers as if they were candles. Then Christine showed us Ava’s life book that is filled with family and adventures. We loved seeing her when she was a baby and now she has a baby sister Lily, so she is no longer a baby anymore. Nico presented Ava with her gift of a chain of 
hearts and we went to the table to enjoy ourselves. Thanks Ava and Christine for our fun birthday celebration with you.
Shoko loved dressing up in the pink princess skirt and top. There are always sparkles all over the room when we wear this outfit and we have to admit that it suited her really well. She also chose to wear the purple tiara. She and Miya were pretending to be mothers together looking after their babies. Miya complained that she was cold so Shoko covered her in a blanket to keep her warm.
Tokutaro brought his own binoculars to school and laid them carefully next to our school ones. Some of us 
went to the table and looked at the large sweet potato collage and wanted to draw. We used greens and browns and made our own individual sweet potato digging drawings which were really detailed. We spoke about pairs and now we understand that a pair is two of something e.g. a pair of eyes, a pair of socks, a pair of ears, a pair of mittens etc. We used pegs and attached pairs of mittens and socks onto the washing line as if we had just completed the laundry. We used up all the socks and mittens and played a little longer and then took them off and packed away. Our last game was really fun and funny. Shelley demonstrated what we had to do. She pretended that she was a tiny pumpkin seed and she curled up and made her body as small as she could be. 
Goh san covered her with a beautiful piece of orange fabric and Darren quietly and secretly asked one of us to say “good morning”. She had to guess who it was. We laughed a lot especially as our little friends are not able to keep a secret so well. Each time someone said “good morning”; Shelley would ask the person curled up “Who is it?” and our little friends would shout out who it was!
Love always Shelley, Darren, Ayaka, Nanako, Sabine, Goh, Liezl and Christine.