Lets do the numba rhumba cha cha cha cha

It was a beautiful warm spring day today and we felt so happy that we could play outside and not have an icy wind blowing on us. We ran around with so many children from our school today. Upstairs there were thirteen and downstairs there were ten. We were lucky to have Sabine and Yuko as our extra pairs of hands as it was soooo busy in both classrooms.

Downstairs we made the backdrop for our Hina Matsuri pictures that we are putting in our portfolios. We pasted pink cherry blossoms made from origami paper onto the gold backgrounds that we painted yesterday. Our teachers then printed a photo of us and our Hina dolls that we made and we pasted them onto the gold. We love looking at them as they are our faces and we like looking at ourselves; in the mirror and especially because we are a part of an activity that we did.

Upstairs some of us who had not yet made our Hina dolls, made them using a paper plate and origami paper. We also had the chance to choose who would be the man or lady doll next to us. Our teachers printed all of our faces so that our dolls could be us. FJ and Sophie decorated their hearts for Nico’s birthday which we will be celebrating next week.

Ayaka read a beautiful transport story on the Kamishibai. We love looking at the Kamishibai as it is almost like watching a movie. We look at each page and listen to the story that she is telling and then she changes the pages and the story evolves. Afterwards, we all counted to ten in English, Japanese and Chinese. Goh san and Jennifer taught us how to count in Chinese which is a little tricky. Yossi counted in Hebrew all the way to ten and then Miya tried to count up to ten in German. Sean counted in English all by himself. Then we looked at our sheet of paper that had the number symbols all the way up to ten written on it. Next to each number were dots matching the numbers. We had to draw pictures in each column that matched the number at the top. Some of us made transport and we realized that if we were drawing cars in the column that said number two, we had to draw two cars; if we were drawing buses in the column that said number four, we had to draw four buses etc.

We did music and sang our good morning song with our friends and teachers. We were very happy to have both Goh san and Yuko san as our other teachers today, as we are a big, busy group of children.

Downstairs, we did drawings and used wax crayons for our pictures today. We combined some sparkly pens with them but mostly used the wax crayons. Our teachers think that it is good for us to use wax crayons or coloured pencils as we need to put pressure when we are drawing; not like when we use markers, we do not have to push hard at all. The marker can write even if we hold it in between our teeth, which is a little silly though; people don’t hold markers in their teeth, they hold them in their hands.

During the morning we read books with our friends and teachers and today it was Sabine’s turn to read us a special book. She chose to read “Too many shells” and we all sat around her as she read to us. Some of us have good listening skills and some of us can be distracted. Shelley often asks us if we have listening ears as some of our ears have not been listening so well lately.

We forgot to mention that we have a work station in our classroom downstairs. It has nuts, bolts, a saw, hammer, screw driver, pliers, a drill, nails and screws. Of course the things are not real; however they work just like the real thing. The screws have Philips heads on them which are in the shape of a cross and the spanner can undo the screws if we make it the correct size. We have worked out that the nails can be hammered in with the hammer however the screws need the screw driver. We have been using an hour glass so that we give our friends a turn and share with everyone. There are also some attachments to make a car or a crane or any kind of vehicle that we want to.

Another busy day at Ohana comes to an end!

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