Day 1 with Kevan and Jackie

Downstairs our classroom keeps on having little changes as we all try and find our way in our new space. Today we noticed that the table was in the Home Corner with chairs and the rectangular cushions were almost like a divider between the library and the Home Corner. What was so much fun was that there were bowls, cups and cutlery on the table and there were some pans and cooking utensils for us to use. Some of our friends did the cooking while others waited for their meals to be served. Our teachers are trying to help us have boundaries in the room and things will continue to change as this time of transition is happening.

 We had an interesting discussion at the activity table. On one of the boxes that is part of our room divider we have prickly artificial grass. There was one strip of it left over so our teachers put it on the wall and asked us to touch it and tell them how it felt. Clodia said it was nice to touch. Then they asked us what it could be and Tokutaro thought that it could be a snake. Then we went to the activity table and saw a selection of interesting materials on it. There was green cellophane, green tissue paper, green and brown pipe cleaners, foam shaped flowers in green and yellow, petals from artificial flowers, leaves from artificial flowers, some artificial flowers and green feathers. Clodia suggested that we make a garden and when our teachers asked us what we can find in a garden, we of course said: “Flowers!” We then set about making flowers with the materials on the table. We used double sided tape to attach the pieces together and have a beautiful garden. It is a work in progress as the younger children in our class will have different flowers which they will make from the butterfly paintings that we did today as well. Earlier in the day, we had green, blue, red and yellow paint which we put onto a piece of white paper. The paper was folded and when we were finished painting, our teachers folded the paper on top of our painting, we smoodged it out and …………………..Tokutaro said that they looked like butterflies!

Upstairs, we were so happy to welcome Kevan and Jackie and they had so many amazing things prepared for us. We had two books which they read to us; the one was a non fiction book called “First Big Book of Animals” and the second one was a fiction book called “Tiddler”. The first book had wonderful pictures of sea creatures. We learnt that turtles hatch out of eggs; the daddy sea horses carry the babies; an octopus has eight legs and suckers on them and then we saw pictures of seals, penguins, fish and coral. We went fishing with magnets on the end of rods and all of us managed to catch something. We looked at a selection of plastic sea creatures and were asked to observe them carefully for similarities and differences. Sea Lion/Seal – FJ thought that the sea lion looked like a lion; Crab/Lobster – Sean said that they both have two claws while Beckett said they had four claws; Starfish/Octopus – Nico said that an octopus has eight legs and FJ said that a starfish has five legs; Jellyfish/Ray – Beckett said that the ray looked flat while the jellyfish was sort of round.

We did some shell and sea creature rubbings using white paper and coloured pastels. The paper was too thick the first time we tried so we took some thinner paper which worked really well. Jackie and Kevan then showed us how we could roll out some paper clay and press the shells and small plastic sea creatures into it. We then took a cookie cutter and cut the clay into a shape. We took the shells and sea creatures out of the clay and the shapes were left behind in the clay. We now have beautiful patterned tiles which needed a bit more time to dry and harden. We probably will discuss with our teachers whether we want to paint them and make them a colour. Some of us like ours white though. We were so busy doing activities and learning and having fun with Kevan and Jackie today, we decided to go the MPR and spend time trying to climb the climbing wall rather than go to the park. While we were playing in the MPR, we played with the coloured balls. We played a colour game where we had to pick up the balls that were the same colour as a strawberry or a banana etc. We want to say a huge thanks to Jackie and Kevan for all their preparation and for teaching us so many things this morning. We love having them and had so much fun.

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