Welcome Karl

Today we welcomed another new friend, called Karl. He had his first day with us downstairs and he settled really well and was happy playing with the fire truck and cars. He is slowly learning the rules that we have in our class just like we did when we first came to Ohana. Our teachers always tell us that the rules at home are sometimes the same as the ones at school, and sometimes they are different. We think that this is the challenge for us in the beginning; trying to remember which rules belong with whom and where they belong. Our teachers also tell us that the world would be more crazy if everyone only followed their own rules. We have rules about crossing the street, we have rules about getting on the bus and train, we have rules when we go shopping and all of these things guide us through our day and our lives.

  We started off preparing our gifts for Valentine’s Day which is one day in the year that is specifically allocated for saying to the people that we love, “I love you”. We think that it is lovely to have a special day however, we like to say “I love you” whenever we want to; waiting for a special day is way too long for us. Love is something that we like to talk about any day and any time.

We mixed different ingredients in a bowl and added one egg. We don’t want to say too much about what we are making but we can assure you that the classroom smelled like a bakery and the things that we made have beautiful decorations on them. They are also in the shape of hearts! Hmmmmm, you may be wondering what could they be. Well we will just let you keep wondering.

At the activity tables we played with flubber and did some drawings with crayons and coloured pencils. We sat together in a circle and sang “Let’s all hold hands in a circle” and we were introduced to a few more actions e. g. “let’s tap our shoulders in a circle” and “lets rub our tummies and pat our heads” which was a little bit difficult to do at the same time.

We played a listening game where someone hid underneath a blanket and our teachers chose one of us to say “Hello ………” If we were hiding underneath the blanket, we had to tryb to guess who was saying “hello” to us. Some of us guessed really well and the rest of us just enjoyed hiding underneath the blanket and being the centre of attention.

  Upstairs we had coloured water, sand, trays with rivers, islands and lakes to play with. Alongside the trays was a selection of ocean animals, sea shells and spoons to play with. Ethan started off by pouring the coloured water into the trays and then someone helped him and added sand etc. We had so many things to do, and we wanted to do everything. Allie and Jeremy spent time at the light box looking at coloured acetate shapes and patterns. Clodia joined them and they started moving the shapes around so that they overlapped with one another and made new colours e. g. the red overlapped with the yellow and made orange etc. We had a collection of spinning tops to play with that were interesting to look at because they had a certain design on them when they were still however when they were spinning, the design was different.

  On the main table, we had the huge world map to look at. We observed that there is so much water covering the earth and some land where the continents are. Our goal this morning was to create our own pictures on a blue background. The blue background represented the oceans of the world. We cut out shapes which became our islands on our world picture using white paper. We added details to the picture e. g. beaches, hotels, trees, mountains etc. using other art materials.

The book that we read today was called “Captain Duck”. He was the captain of a ship that sailed on the ocean to many different continents and countries. It was so freezing in the park, so we told our teachers and friends what to do to keep your hands warm. Ava – hold them to your necks; Tokutaro – rub them together; Blue – breathe on our hands; Clodia – put them between your knees!

We finally filled our thought bubbles with thoughts. We think that Koh kun was thinking about many things. Here are some of our ideas:

Ava: “I like going on vacations”

Ethan: “I don’t like these glasses”

Tokutaro: “I can see a helicopter”

Clodia: “I’m hungry”

Beckett: “Fries and chicken in Philadelphia”

Ryan: “I look like ironman”

Jessica: “I like princesses”

Jeremy: “A car”

Allie: “I’m getting on a plane”

Blue: “I don’t have a dog”

Noa: “I like them”

We will use these thoughts in our thoughts bubbles and then will have completed our art work.

 We will see you tomorrow and hope you are keeping warm this afternoon, wherever you are.

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