Upstairs downstairs in my ladies chamber

Today was so freezing outside and there were more people coming to visit the school so we decided to go to the MPR and play there. We have not played in the ball pool this year and we had a fabulous time. We jumped into the ball pool; we slid into the ball pool; we built things with the Lego; we attempted to climb the climbing wall; we threw the balls; we put the balls inside our clothes and walked around saying: “I am mummy”. Miyu did this and then Zachary also put some balls underneath his clothes and said: “I am the daddy”. Hisami played the piano and we sang and did actions with some of our friends, holding hands in a circle.

 We baked our last batch of cookies and our friends upstairs, starting preparing theirs too. We made heart shapes on the dough and then decorated them with hearts, pink and silver balls and some other sprinkles. Our classroom, once again smelled just like a bakery. Yummmm! We started working on an informal group project which we will use for our birthdays in March. We have five birthdays in March and are looking forward to celebrating with a group of our friends and their families.

Part of our activities today was playing with flubber, and we really love the texture and the consistency. We have never really felt something like flubber and it keeps us interested for a long time. It also helps keepn us calm and quiet. We did some more drawing using red and gold for our belated Chinese New Year pictures. We will put the pictures in our workbooks. We read books together in the library and our teachers read us books in small groups. We love reading the Eric Carle books in particular “The Very Hungry Catepillar” and “Brown Bear” and “Polar Bear”.

Today Adrien went upstairs for the day and he had a great time. His friends Jennifer, from his Chinese class and Allie who used to be with us downstairs. He chose to be a snack leader today and helped Yossi to lay the tables for snack time.

At the one activity table, Sean, Tirza, Yossi, Momo and Tokutaro painted their free style “Pop Art” pictures using blue, red, pink and yellow paint. They used brushes and circular caps and pieces of wood that were round. Adrien played with the puzzle that has the entire world on it. He needed a bit of help so Sean sat down with him on the mat and they completed it together. We had a wonderful time using the islands, lakes and ocean trays. We added skindivers, a treasure chest, frogs and other sea creatures to them and this led us to have wonderful “imaginative play” conversations with our friends and teachers.

On another of the tables, a peg board with really small beads and sticks was popular with Clodia, Allie and Ava. They said that the beads reminded them of the “Pop Art” spots on our paintings. When we went to the park today, Beckett found a huge piece of ice and he called us over so that we could see it. He said that it was really slippery and we thought that maybe this was because it was melting and becoming water. Underneath the water it was still hard so this is what could have made it slippery.

   The book that we looked at today was “The Children’s World Atlas”. Darren askes us if we knew what an atlas was and we were not sure. He then said the sounds of the word “m, a, p” for us to work out. The letters spelled the word “map” and we learnt that an atlas is a book of maps. We told Darren some of the places we knew and had travelled to e. g. New Zealand, England, America, Australia and Thailand. In an atlas you can sometimes see rivers, lakes and mountains in countries. We know that Japan has many mountains and lots and lots of ocean around it. When we were playing with the trays, we put sand on the island parts and tried to imagine countries with mountains, lakes, rivers etc. We can only imagine the ones that we have been to and seen which helps us understand the world and how it looks, a little bit more.

During circle time, we identified the number 14 on the calendar. We know that it is made up of two numbers viz. a one and a four. We learnt that it is this date in February which is called Valentine’s Day. We made cookies today for our loved ones and decorated them. Some of our friends will make more tomorrow morning.

   Thanks for a busy day at school and see some of you tomorrow.

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