Honey Joys

21^st February 2013. We were so happy to welcome back Santiago and Andres Felipe after their long holiday in Osaka. We were however sad that Abiya is still sick and we will maybe see her tomorrow and possibly next week. Downstairs we played with the light table again and this time, Tokutaro discovered that he could put the shapes around the edge of the table so they stood up. We could still see the light through the shapes. We are all learning the names of the different shapes and have circle and triangle clearly etched in our memories. The triangle on the light table is red and the circle is yellow. William, Allie and Santiago completed their yellow and black backgrounds and made their gardens onto the same page all in one activity today. We had two strainers on the table this morning with pipe cleaners. We had long pipe cleaners today and some short ones too. The strainers were blue and white. Vincent threaded a long pipe cleaner and pushed it almost all the way down so that it popped out the other end. At the moment we are only threading them using one end. William found another use for the strainer and put it on his head. Soon it will be the end of February so today we did some cooking using honey. We have been learning about bees and how they collect nectar and pollen to make honey. We mixed butter in a pot with honey and when the butter had melted we mixed cornflakes with the liquid and placed them inside our home made cupcake holders. We ate them after we had eaten our snack and really liked the taste of the honey with the crunchy cornflakes. In Australia they call them “honey joys”. The story that we read today was called “My Painted House, My chicken and Me”. It was about a girl from South Africa who lived in a beautiful painted house and her best friend was a chicken. After reading the story we pretended that we were chickens, flapping our wings and clucking; we roared like lions; we made silly noises like monkeys; we rolled in pollen like bees; we flew around like birds and we jumped like kangaroos. The very last thing that we did was sleep like a baby and then we all shouted “wake up” and we prepared the table for lunch. Shelley had to go early as once a month she goes to Komaba Daigaku to help teach English to the mums of students there. On the 3^rd floor we had a lot of fun in free play time and welcomed back Andres Felipe. Sophie, Jamie and Emily all made their hot air balloons. Sophie chose a blue balloon which she decorated with paint markers but then just as she finished working on it, the balloon popped!! She looked so disappointed so we gave her a special marbled balloon and then attached the basket with string. Into the basket she put a finger puppet. Sofia, Margo, Jenny and Marie enjoyed using the colored wooden blocks which they placed onto the cards to make pictures. Between them they made butterflies, cats and fish pictures. Beckett, Andres Felipe and Sean all played together on the carpet with the cards and then put together a large wooden circle for the trains in the library. Miya, Jennifer and Emily then decided to play with the food and went on a pretend picnic in the classroom. Margo got out the wooden blocks and built a beautiful house and watched as Marie came to join her dressed in a pirates outfit. They then played “I can see you” using the pirates telescope which was very funny to watch. We read a new book today titled ‘The Magic School Bus, Lost in the solar system’ which showed the school bus magically rocketing into space. There was no gravity and we then pretended to be rockets. The children helped with the countdown from 10 and then we pretended to float in space, we then pretended to pour out some water and drink it while it floated in the air. In the book there was a floating banana and so they soon wanted to peel a banana and pretend to eat it with their hands behind their backs. In circle time we all acted out and helped with the words to ‘We’re going on a Bear hunt’, and moved around the classroom imagining swishy grass, squelchy mud, splashing across a river, walking through a snowstorm, tiptoeing through a gloomy cave and then rushing back home, up the stairs and under the bed covers when we saw the bear. In a circle we all got some thicker paper today to make paper airplanes and worked together on folding accurately and pressing the paper down carefully. We then took our paper airplanes to the park and seeing the top of the slide as the best place to launch them we threw them as hard as we could. It was great fun and we chased them for all of our park time.