Artists at work
It was such a fun day at school and we had so many things prepared for us to do. Downstairs, we had to miss out on cooking but our teachers were really smart and they didn’t tell us that we were going to do cooking, so we didn’t have time to be 
disappointed. Tomorrow we will definitely do baking as this marks the end of last month and the beginning of a new month. Today is the first day of the fifth month of the year and it is called May. We only have a few more weeks left of this school year and are going to maximize our time together learning and playing and spending precious hours together.
Today we continued working on the large canvas. We tore pieces of paper tape and pasted them all over the canvas. Then we used a mustard coloured acrylic paint with rollers and brushes and painted on the tape. We also splashed watery yellow paint on the painting. Our teachers pulled the tape off and we noticed that it made beautiful patterns on the canvas. Tomorrow we will use some
orange paint on it. Our teachers had to be so careful as we love painting and sometimes we are not so careful what we do with the brushes and rollers so they can get paint on their clothes. We think that it would be a good idea if they had their own art smocks just like we have.
After we had worked on the canvas, we made our own individual paintings. We really love painting and Nanako said that it is always quiet when we are painting. It must be that it is a soothing activity for us and we experience internal quietness when doing this kind of activity. We spent time reading together on the mat and now with the new arrangement in our classroom we are making much more use of the large space inside the room and using more of the toys and things. We love 
dressing up and today Tokutaro dressed up as Barney the dinosaur and Clodia was a princess. Clodia shared her tiara with Zachary.
Nanako read us one of the “I Spy” books and we had to try to find the things on the left hand page inside the right hand page. This is a very important perceptual task and is all about developing our figure ground perception. This skill helps us in life in general but specifically when we are learning to read and reading. We need to be able to see something small in a large picture and when you are little like us, it can be tricky.
Upstairs when Jenny and Ava arrived and saw the Dora flashcards, they wanted to use them straight away. Jenny took the alphabet cards and Ava took the opposite cards. Sophie wanted to complete her ocean scene and she added her sea creatures to it placing them carefully in between the seaweed and on the sand. Jenny also spent time in the Listening Center where she listened to and played a listening game. It was a Bingo game where you have to listen to the sounds and try to fill up a row; then you can shout “Bingo”. Sean discovered a chair Lego piece which he attached to the Lego wall. Ayaka helped Beckett and Jenny make paper airplanes which they took to the park so that they could test them. They tried to throw the airplanes both over arm and under arm and under arm seemed to work 
best. Jenny and Beckett developed a bond today as they both showed an interest in the same things. In fact, when we came back from the park today, they held hands.
Since today is the beginning of May, we started a new theme titled ‘Birds’. We made a list of many different kinds of birds that we know e.g. duck, parrot, penguin, ostrich, owl, swan, eagle, emu, flamingo and rooster. We drew a picture of a bird on a white board and Ayaka helped us learn some new words in Japanese. Sophie and Jenny already knew some of the Japanese words so they could also answer even before Ayaka could write the words down. You can also learn the words if you read the board which is in the picture here.
We started working on our gifts for Mother’s Day which we will present to them when they come for breakfast on Monday 13th May.
Love always Shelley, Darren, Nanako, Ayaka, Christine, Goh, Liezel and Sabine.