So long, farewell, aufwiedersen, goodbye.....Jamie

Upstairs we had a farewell party for Jamie. He and his brother Cameron told us all about their move to England and that they will be leaving on an airplane on Saturday morning. They brought in some yummy pastries for us to eat with our snacks. After snack time, Jamie asked if we could read the story called “Gilbert in Deep” because it is one of his favourites. Then we asked him to sit in the special chair and FJ presented him with the card that we made with all of our pictures on it. Jamie then called all names and we gave him a big hug and told him that we will miss him very much. We posed for a group photo making silly faces and then trying to look smiley and happy. When our friends leave to go far away, we don’t really feel happy but we tried really hard to smile. We will miss him very much and want to thank his dad and mum for the delicious snack and for choosing Ohana for Jamie’s preschool in Japan. We were so glad to meet him and have time to play with him. Thanks for coming to school today Jamie, with your dad and brother, Cameron; please write to us from England and tell us what you are doing there!

We did wonderful paintings of sea creatures that we have been learning about. Ava painted a crab, a fish, a lobster and seaweed; Nico painted jellyfish and a fish; Beckett painted a turtle and a fish; FJ painted a starfish, red fish, jellyfish and sea weed; Sean painted a seahorse and blue fish. Downstairs, we missed seeing our new friend Marc, today as he is still not well but we look forward to welcoming him to school next week, on Monday. Today was such a busy day in the downstairs class and we had every intention of going downstairs to the MPR but we just didn’t have any time. After our free play time, we sat together on the mat and sang our good morning songs; where we sing hello in different languages after doing certain actions and we sing our “Hello” song where we sing our own names. We then looked at pictures in a book about trees. Of course we knee that the pictures were of trees however when Shelley asked us what we can see on the trees, we were not sure. We then looked at some pictures of leaves and realized that you can find leaves on a tree and branches. So we set about making our own Friendship Tree based on the way that Darren made the giving tree with our friends upstairs. We held a long roll of plastic and our teachers attached a small piece of wire to the end and then we rolled while singing: “Rolling, rolling, rolling…….” When we slid the wire off, it was all twisty and then we did the same with different coloured pipe cleaners; which then were attached to the tree trunk. The trees trunk is just like our bodies and the branches are like our arms and legs. Our teachers attached the small branches to the tree trunk. We will add leaves to it and think about the different things that we do for our friends. We already thought about playing, hugging, sharing, putting the alphabet on the white board, talking nicely, drawing pictures for them etc. We will put our names on the leaves with all the things that we come up with over the next few months.

We also completed our butterflies which we made last week with Jackie and Kevan. We looked at the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly and noticed that a butterfly often has beautiful patterns and shapes on its wings and it has antennae. We added these and we also like the wiggly eyes which we put on as well. We added them to our flower and seed display on the wall in our classroom. Some of the butterflies are even sitting on the large leaf in our room. Maybe they are looking for food! We completed the story about the yellow cat. We discovered that it was stuck in a tree and Jerry was really upset because he was too small to get it down. He decided to climb the tree to see if he could get to the top but………………….he also got stuck. Luckily the Fire Department came and rescued him. Love always Shelley, Darren, Nanako, Ayaka, Christine, Goh, Liezel and Sabine.