Footprints in the snow

Miya, Lily, Tomo and Gento were in this morning and all played together so nicely. Gento and Tomo firstly pulled out the cars and trucks box and so we also got out the road carpet for them to drive them along. There was an accident according to Gento on the road and a man was hit by a toy car but luckily an ambulance driven by Gento arrived to take the man to the hospital. Lily was meanwhile dressing up as a pirate with her hat and telescope. She made sure everyone knew who she was because she kept on saying to all her friends, “Lily Pirate”. Miya started her morning by asking if she needed to sign in for summer school like she does on regular days and immediately moved to the sign in table to draw. She told Ayaka and myself that she was drawing ‘The grasslands” and that she wanted to draw a giraffe which she did really well. Miya then moved to the imaginative play area where she and Lily decided to put on crash helmets for a while. They looked so cute. Lily then came to the table to do some decoration for her snowman cap. She firstly stuck on an orange triangle for the nose, then 2 small circles of paper for the eyes. She then drew a lot of green marker on the body before finishing off with some sparkly shapes for the buttons. We again went to the park a little earlier today after snack time to try and catch the sunshine on the ground and were lucky the weather was so good. The yellow roller slide was popular with all the children and teachers today. It was great to see Tomo and Gento on the big concrete slide together too, holding hands most of the time as they slid to the bottom. When we returned to the classroom we went straight into the library and quickly reviewed the book from yesterday titled ‘Snow Bear’ and noticed the beautiful footprints in the snow. We 6then read another book about cold snowy places titled ‘Where is home little Pip’. A story about a baby penguin that gets lost and can’t find his way home. He searches everywhere and asks lots of arctic animals along the way where his home is. Eventually he is lucky and his parents come looking and find him. We saw the footprints in the book and decided to make some of our own snowy footprints in the classroom. We all sat together and took off our shoes and socks and then the teachers gave us a large piece of black paper each. We then stepped onto some white painted sponge which felt all cold and sticky. We then walked, jumped and moved around on the white paper leaving our special footprints behind. After we had cleaned or feet we made a snowman each using a large, a medium and a small circle of white paper each which we glued together. We could then use any colored markers we wanted to decorate the snowman and put on eyes, mouth, nose, buttons etc. Today was Gento’s last day with us at winter school and he will be sorely missed as he will be away until the spring of next year. We wish you all the best Gento. Take care. Love always ‘The Ohana Team’.