Artists at Ohana
Today again we had small classes and enjoyed our time with our teachers and our friends. We know that some of our friends are away but we think that some forgot that we have school this week. When there are holidays, it is sometimes hard to keep track of days and 
also it is a cold and rainy day, we think that staying at home would have been a great option. We look forward to seeing all of our friends back at school next week.
Downstairs we had three friends today and spent a lovely morning adding to our canvas, playing on the mat, listening to story and attending our KIDFIT class. Our canvas is coming along really well and today we added some interesting handmade paper to it. We had a selection of pieces in different shapes in keeping with the Autumn tones. The colours were brown, dark purple brown, orange, brown and red, yellow and reddish brown. We used watered down wood glue and spread it on the shapes and then pasted them all over the canvas. We left the shapes to dry for a short while and then added some sweet potato stamps. Our teachers cut 
the shape of a leaf in a sweet potato which we dipped into brown paint. We stamped the leaf shapes all over the canvas. We tend to stand in the same place when we are working on something however today, our teachers encouraged us to walk around the canvas and stamp the leaf shape all over; on the sides and in the middle. We also pasted some really pale tissuepaper onto the brown paint.
It is a true work in progress and we will leave it on the table and work on it for a while every day. We welcomed a friend of Shelley’s Maria and her sister, brother-in-law and nephew from Estonia. His name was Roman and he spent a lovely hour playing with us and enjoying the special things that our school has to offer. Sabine and 
Christophe, her husband popped into school as well and gave us a huge amount of money from her cookie sales. It was 65,000Yen.
Upstairs we also took part in our KIDFIT class and today was the last day using bean bags, Dynabands and scoops with prickly balls. Our month of lessons on our skeleton and phalanges has come to an end. We learnt so much especially that our skeleton is underneath our muscles which are underneath our skin. We know that eating foods rich in calcium is very important for our bones. We also learnt that in order for us to sit up straight, to stand and to walk, we need bones. If we were a puppet, we would not be able to stand and sit like we do.
Next month is Shoko’s birthday so seeing that she is away in Spain, we decided to make hearts for her today. Now they will be a real 
surprise! FJ, Miya, Beckett, Yossi and Nico all added feathers to their flamingos, which are now in the grasslands display in the classroom. We sang “Five little ducks” and read the story “Bringing the rain to Kapiti Plain”. Today we looked in detail at the works of M.C. Escher. We saw that the animals that he paints are interlinked. Around each of the creatures is a black line separating each creature. Some examples of creatures that he paints are fish, lizards, butterflies, and winged horses. We then took black markers and on a small piece of card, we drew a patterned area.
We coloured in between the lines so that we could understand this style of art, which is quite unusual. We will colour more of the sections in next week and then see how we can use these drawing on the canvas. We revised the letters s, a, t, i, p, n during our afternoon literacy class and had to try to find an animal that starts with these sounds. We looked at flashcards as well. Some words we thought of were snake, alligator, turtle and porcupine. The “i” and the “n” were a little tricky. Have a great weekend!
Love always Shelley, Darren, Ayaka, Nanako, Sabine, Goh, Liezel and Christine.