Picnic in the park

Having the opportunity to play outside is really important for children and big people and we are so lucky here in Tokyo, that we can do this. We all went earlier to the park for two reasons; one is that it was quite a hot day today and the other reason is that there are two other schools that come to the park later, and this then makes the park full. We had a great time with just our Ohana friends and enjoyed going to the tap, filling containers up with water as well as coming down the large slide holding hands. It was lovely to welcome Liam back to school after his long holiday over Golden Week in Australia. He had a huge smile on his face when he returned to school this morning and other than a moment when he looked downstairs at his stroller and called “mum”, he was an active participant in the day. We all had many activities to do in our class downstairs as our teachers are observing our skills in detail. Today we did puzzles and our teachers noted how many piece puzzles we can do. They were amazed to see so many of us doing puzzles that are quite advanced for our age. Tokutaro is really good at puzzles and after completing a 35 piece one yesterday, his challenge today was doing a 50 piece one; and he did it. We also did counting to see how high we can count and whether we understand number concept. The games that we play for number concept are ones where we have to count objects so that we understand what two means rather than just count from memory.

We did cutting at the table too and Vincent showed us that he too can cut on a line. He cut thin strips of paper, exactly on the line just like some of our older friends. Our teachers pasted the small pieces that we cut into our portfolios so that our families can see an example of our cutting skills. We read books in small groups and love our new story called “The big orange splot”. In the story there is a street where the houses all look the same until a bird drops a big orange ‘splot’ into one of the roofs of the houses. Then the houses all become completely different and have their own individuality. In fact they end up looking exactly like the dreams of the people who live in them. We all want to go to that street as the houses look amazing.

Upstairs we had a lovely snack time in the park at one of the picnic tables. It was a beautiful day out and we thought that this was a great idea, especially while we have good weather. We started off by decorating hearts for some of our teachers who will be celebrating their birthdays in June, during Summer School. Yossi decided to use gloves while he was drawing and he was using the pirate telescope to scrutinize his work. Sean, Nico and FJ enjoyed building with the Kapla blocks which they specifically asked their teachers to take out today. Miya brought in a beautiful shell that she found on the beach while holidaying in Australia. We all held it to our ears and could hear the ocean; it felt like the ocean was in our classroom. We sang “Five Little Ducks” and read the famous story called “The Ugly Duckling”. We learnt a new letter and sound today; it was the letter “b” in its lower case form. The song that we learnt that goes with the letter “b” is; “bring your bat and bring your ball”. We had to try to guess which objects in the picture started with the letter “b”. Our teachers were really tricky as they showed us many pictures of objects on flashcards and they moved the cards really quickly so we had to think really quickly. We noticed baseball, baby, butterfly, basketball, bat, book, bottle etc. We then each took a small white board and practiced how to write the letter “b”. We learnt that with all letters just like in other languages, there is a particular stroke order when you write them. The letter “b” starts at the top and you make a line down; then you go up a little and make the round part on the bottom right hand side of the line. You can see from the photo, how carefully we drew the letter. When we had finished drawing the letter, we could draw some pictures of things that start with the same sound. Love always Shelley, Darren, Nanako, Ayaka, Christine, Goh, Liezel and Sabine