Happy birthday Elisa

Today we were happy to have Shelley with us at school and she is slowly getting better. We celebrated Elisa’s birthday, which is actually on the weekend. Her mum, Liz and her sister, Elena, came to school to celebrate with us just before lunch time. Elisa was waiting for her mum and sister to arrive, for the entire day as she had been anticipating this special day with so much excitement. All of us had party hats and funky glittery star sunglasses and Elisa wore her crown that Hisami made; her mum wore a huge happy birthday hat and Elena wore a princess crown. We had two cakes and lit two sets of candles and then Elisa blew them out. We sang “Elisa is 2 years old” and “Happy Birthday to you” in English and Japanese. Zachary gave her the gift of hearts that we made for her. The one cake was a “Roi de Galette” which people in France and some other countries have during Christmas. There was a crown all around the cake.

We want to say a big thank you to her mum for the yummy cake and the fun accessories.

During activity time, some of us made our “shimekazari” with Hisami. We used beautiful gold, silver and red “mizuhiki”. We added a flower made from white and red tissue paper and some rectangular pieces of paper in white and silver. Hisami wrote our names in Japanese and English on them. Maybe we can use them for next New Year and hang them on the doors of homes. We also added origami to the opposite side of our “hagoita” and a few friends who had not yet painted theirs, did so today. Hisami also did Wiley’s calligraphy with her and then we went downstairs to play in the MPR. We focused on balance during our time there, and walked along the sides of the ball pool, which we have not yet reassembled. They are long rectangles which are wide enough for balancing.

We held hands in a circle and did some review of colours. Our colour collages are all on display in our classroom but they are really high up and we cannot reach them. We learnt that it is possible to reach things that are really high. Zachary suggested that we use a ladder however we don’t have  a long one at our school. Shelley took some of our cushions and piled them on top of one

another. Liam thought that maybe we needed to get some more cushions however we counted five, and this number was perfect. We were given a turn to name a colour and then our teachers picked us up and we used the stick pointer to show which colour we knew. There were eight colours on the wall so eight children stood on top of the cushions. We sang “Hello” to everyone and had a lovely full day with our friends and teachers.

Upstairs Ethan and Blue planted the remaining tulips into the two planters outside on the balcony. We looked at the three that are growing inside our classroom and we saw their roots. We continued reading “Katie and the Mona Lisa” which is a really long storybook. We have read about two thirds of it and are at the part now where Katie and Mona Lisa are jumping inside other famous paintings. It is really exciting to see them experiencing other art works together e. g. George and the Dragon and Springtime by Botticelli.

We did some phonics and concentrated on the sound of the letter “r”. We sang the song that is related to the sound and then practiced writing the letter on white boards. We looked at flashcards with pictures of things that start with an “r” e. g. rain, ring, roses, rat, rabbit, rope, rocking horse, robot, racing car, rrocket and raccoon. We continued working on our “tako” which are our kites and we wanted to ask you to please look at the fabulous display on the board in the office downstairs. It has fantastic photos of our taiko workshop with Moko sensei.

Love Shelley, Darren, Hisami, Ayaka, Liezel, Nanako, Goh, Christine and MarynaHappy