Our new sign

When we arrived at school today we saw that there was a huge sign on the wall saying Ohana International School. Yesterday evening the sign was put up and Sabine took some photos of the men who made it and put it up for us. Thanks for the big sign. You can’t miss it!

 On our second day of summer school we welcomed our new friend, Koh and he had a great day. We went down to the MPR, and spent time sliding, throwing balls onto the soft Velcro board, climbing, playing with balls and sitting on the rocking horse. Koh kun experimented with all of the equipment and especially like throwing balls and trying to pull them off the Velcro board.

It was a rainy day so all of us had the opportunity to play in the MPR sometime during the morning. Downstairs, we started off our day playing with play dough, and drawing at the activity tables. Some of us went to play with the toys in the other part of our room and played with the food, dishes, cutlery and toys. We have a new toy in our classroom that is similar to stickle bricks but the bricks are much larger and you have to use more strength to get them to attach to one another. We built a tower together which was quite tall. We also enjoyed doing puzzles at the table and are trying to adjust to our new routine and friends and teachers. Some of us are really little and we want everything just the way we want it which can be challenging for both us and our teachers and friends. We also do not have so much language so crying is our most powerful tool! Oh, oh!

 Koh and Elisa didn’t want to sleep today so while we were sleeping they went downstairs to the MPR and played there. They had so much energy today. During the morning we sang “The Wheels of the Bus”; “Everybody clapping” and doing many other actions; “Wake up, it’s a lovely day”; “Baa baa black sheep” and we did some dancing too. We put on the Wiggles CD and we danced and sang to many of our favourite songs; “Hot Potato”; “The monkey dance”; “Shake our sillies out”; “Butterflies” etc. We like to read books and look at the pictures. Sometimes we are able to point to pictures of things that we recognise.

Upstairs, when we arrived at school, there were two areas set up in the classroom; one area was for origami food making (Beckett made a hotdog here today) and the second area was where we could go shopping for food. There was paper and pencils so we could make our shopping lists and there was a cash register with money inside it and there was toy food which we could buy. Ryan and Ethan together with Tomo wanted to use the Velcro wall so they started to build a marble run. They soon learned how to make the pieces stick to the Velcro. Tokutaro and Clodia decided to draw pictures on the white board while Abiya, Lily, Clodia, Ava and Olivia all said that they were going to have a picnic together. They moved to the library area to create their picnic.

We didn’t go to the park so we went downstairs to the MPR and had fun just like our friends from the little class. We also took out all of the coloured balls and when we packed away, we played a colour game using different types of fruit. Ayaka said a word in Japanese and we had to try to remember the names of the colours in Japanese too. In our circle time, we clapped our hands and sang Anata no namae wa; and then we said our names. We sang a song for numbers in Japanese as well called “Hajimaru yo”. In this song you use your fingers to make different kinds of animals; and the last song we sang in Japanese was “Heads and shoulders, knees and toes”. Our story today was called “Kuruma wa ikutsu?” which means “How many cars?” We counted the cars and other modes of transport in Japanese. The last fun thing of the day was when we went into two groups with one group decorating our shopping bags and making a handle out of a coloured pipe cleaner; the second activity was going shopping and learning how to ask the shopkeeper for something e.g. “kore kudasai” and “Ikura desu ka?” We learnt the names of fruit and vegetables in Japanese and continually practice our counting.

We look forward to seeing more of our friends tomorrow. Have a good afternoon.

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