Counting sea creatures

Our day started off with much excitement as some of us put hearts onto our Friendship Tree. We chose the colours that we wanted and stood on a chair; reached up to a branch and pasted our heart there. Finn received one for giving Thorsten his shoe; Ren for sharing the ball with Noah in the park; Noah for taking turns using the shredder; Quentin for helping one of his friends and Thorsten for helping pack away. Every day we will get more hearts until our tree is filled with them and there is no room. Shelley says that there is always room for kindness. We spoke about “in front of” and “behind” once again and asked one another what was in front of them and what was behind them. We completed our “Today is……………………” and then we went to the tables to do some fun activities. But before we talk about the activities, we will share with you our morning circle time and discussion and singing.

We always start our day with actions and singing. Today we started off with “Everybody tapping” and we included clapping, winking, nodding, blowing a kiss etc. Shelley thinks that this is a good way to get our attention. We sang “There are seven days in a week” which we don’t do every day. Ren knew straight away that today is Wednesday and he said it was okay for Shelley to still sing the song so that the other children could try to work it out for themselves too

Shelley believes that it is important to be consistent however every now and then she thinks that it is okay to break away from the normal pattern that we have in our day. Then we sang our “Hello” song and all of us sang so beautifully. Some of us sing really quietly when it is our turn and everyone smiles. We always feel proud of our friends and admire whatever they do.

When we looked at the sun which depicted the weather for today, we thought about the shape of the sun; a circle. Shelley asked us where we can find the sun; she asked us if it was in the building across the road and some of us said yes! Quentin knew that the sun was in the sky and he told us. We sang “Good morning Mr. Sun”. Then Shelley asked us if we can see the sun all the time and we told her “No”! In the night time the moon is in the sky and the stars. We sang “Twinkle, twinkle little star”.

We focused on number this morning; matching objects to cards with stars on one side and numbers on the other side. We have played this game before and today some of us received a card and we had to count the correct number of sea creatures so that they matched the number on the card. Finn took three beetles and one snake; Ren took four beetles and a sea anemone; Nico took one fish; Quentin took a jelly fish, an eel, a fish and a crab; Sui chan took a lobster and a fish. When we finished counting the objects we were all given a chance to look for certain creatures and place them back in the container. We love singing the “Numba Rhumba” song and are trying to learn how to rhyme. We forgot to mention that this morning when we came to school, the Cat in the Hat was playing on the CD and there is a lot of rhyming in this book. Maybe if we listen to it more we will understand how to rhyme. Shelley explains it to us this way; she says that we have to think of a word that has the same middle sound (but we think that this is really tricky).

At the activity tables we had collage and drawing with markers, crayons and different coloured shapes and textures. We made interesting drawings and Shelley thinks that the way she presented the activity made the difference. The table that we work on is white so when she puts white paper down for us to work on, it is difficult to see the corners. So today she pasted the paper onto a coloured background and we could see the edges and the corners. We will keep our pictures for our workbooks. There is so much more to write but there is no more room………………………..

Love Shelley and Darren