Happy birthday William

Wow, our mums, dads and teachers are great packers. We had a great team of mums, dads and teachers packing today. Sabine did the office downstairs while Richard, Mayuko, Jocelyn and Darren did the third floor. There are so many boxes in our classrooms now. We think that there are more boxes than children!

We were all together on the second floor for part of the morning and it was a little tight for all of us. There were seventeen children and five adults. We far outnumbered the adults and we counted everyone with the pointer finger. We all tried to make our fingers look just like those on the pointer finger stick. Shelley held the stick and tapped us each on our heads and she even tapped the teacher’s heads.

We started off our day drawing on white boards; doing animal lacing cards and completing decorating the crown for William. Many of us played on the floor with the Lego, wooden toys and cars. We read books as well and did some puzzles.

And we also prepared for our celebration this morning. It was William’s second birthday party. His mum and dad both came to celebrate with us. Jennifer was very excited because William is her brother. We started off by singing a song to ask William how old he was; it went like this:

“How old are you now, how old are you now,

How old are you now, how old are you now?”

Jennifer answered for William and told everyone that he was two and we sang:

“He’s two years old now; he’s two years old now

He’s two years old now; he’s two years old now”

We then held up three fingers as the extra one in some cultures and religions is for good luck for the following year. We sang our candle song in which we blow out one candle until there are none. It is called “Three little candles”. When you turn five you can change the number to “Six little candles” and then you have to add in lines for each number. We all looked at William and thought that he needed a crown to make him look like a birthday king; however he didn’t want to wear the crown. So Jennifer wore the crown even though we know that she is not two years old. We sang “William is three years old today” and all stood up in a circle and sang “If you’re happy and you know it”. Some of us gave suggestions for actions e.g. FJ told us to jump; Nico told us to turn around; Sofia told us to hop; Jamie told us to skip and then we shouted “happy birthday” and we whispered it too. Then Olivia presented William with his birthday present and he pulled out a long string of hearts. William’s mum, Rie, is such a wonderful baker; she made amazing cookies for us. She made cars, candles and the number two. And what’s more they had different colours on them. We have a photo to show everyone.

We also had lovely raspberries, strawberries and blueberries for snack. Shelley always says that we need to eat our snack first and then we can have the treats. Of course she doesn’t want us to be too full so we can leave some of our snack for later. After we had eaten our snack and the treats, Darren, William and Jennifer’s dad read us a story called “The Snowman Story”. It was about a little boy called William who became friends with a snowman; the snowman took him up in the sky and they flew around the town where he lived. William went to bed and when he woke up, the sun was up too and the snowman had melted. This is what happens to snow when the weather gets warm. It melts and becomes water.

We want to say a big thank you to William and Jennifer’s mum and dad for coming to school to celebrate and for being so kind to all of us. We were so many children sitting together for the party and we all had more than enough treats.

It was a beautiful warm sunny day in the park and today many of us complained to our teachers that we were hot. Some days we need a warm jacket and some days we don’t; the problem is that we are not sure which days will be warm and which days will be cool. Today was a spring day for us.

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