So many activities

Many of our friends who were sick last week came back today and we were so happy to welcome them back. We are still missing a few friends who were sick especially in the upstairs class. We send our love and wishes to them all and hope that they will be back at Ohana soon. The weather is so cold at the moment and with the rain making everything in the park wet, we stayed indoors.

Downstairs we listened to new songs and did some new dances and action games. The one which we really loved was called “Clap, clap your hands”. In this song we clapped our hands and stamped our feet at the beginning of each verse. Then new fun actions were added in e.g. raise your arms in the air and bend your knees.

There was another one about musical instruments called “Our instruments”. Each instrument was named and then we played them. We played the maracas, tambourine, drum, bells, castanets and clappers. We also listened to our “hello” song on the same CD and sang our names when we heard the children’s voices playing. Tokutaro and Clodia sang their names really loudly.

 We had many activities to do at the tables today. We did more leaf rubbing so that Allie, Eva and Charlie could have the opportunity to do it and we also played with plasticine. It feels a little like play dough however it is a lot harder to squish it in the beginning. The more that we squeezed it, the softer it became. We each had our own separate colours to play with and when we were finished, we rolled them each into a ball. Some of us have our favourite colours so we wanted those colours to play with viz. Eva wanted red and Tokutaro wanted yellow.

Another of our activities was baking. We made chocolate brownie cupcakes and loved the smell of the chocolate in the bowl. We all had a turn to pour and mix and then we stood on chairs and looked at it baking in the oven. When we started to smell the cake, we knew that it was ready and our teachers let us taste a small piece from some left overs. Those of us who were standing on chairs looking into the oven as the cupcakes were baking, soon lost interest when our teachers started singing and dancing with our other friends. Sabine put some frosting/icing on them and a special Ohana M&M. We are looking forward to celebrating with Christine tomorrow even though her birthday is only on the weekend. The last activity that we had to do today was in connection with numbers. We had number puzzles and plastic numbers that corresponded with them. We matched the plastic numbers and then matched the pictures of objects with our specific numbers. Some of us did this activity at the table and all of us sat together on the floor so that we could each have a turn to match a number.

Upstairs we did Yoga which we really love and haven’t done for a while. We always have the opportunity to choose a yoga pose and present it to our friends and then we all do it together. We chose the following: FJ – elephant; Miya – giraffe; Oliver – cheetah; Shoko – zebra; Nico – gazelle and Beckett – vulture.  We also made up our own poses and demonstrated them to our friends.

At the activity table we made a picture first starting with the background, using the theme “Plains”. Through working this way, we will learn about foreground and background. We had a sheet of yellow paper which we cut down the centre to make two plains. We used one half today and will use the other half over the next few days. We used scrap paper and wavy scissors and cut out trees which we pasted onto the page. Shoko, Nico, Miya and Ayaka all used the kitchen this morning and we played with the plastic food, preparing breakfast for our teachers and our friends. Some of us pretended to be on an airplane with FJ the pilot and Nico, the flight attendant. Afterwards we went to the table that had a special “grassland” area set up with plastic animals. Our teachers were really happy to hear us using some of the words that we used on Friday in our role play activity e.g. “can I have that when you are finished?” Beckett worked on a crown for Christine’s birthday party tomorrow. In the library we read the book “The lion and the mouse” and then “Dear Zoo”. In “Dear Zoo” we could life the flaps and we could name the different animals that you can find in the “grasslands”.

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