Have a great weekend and get better soon Darren!

We were sorry that Darren was sick today and hope that he gets better soon. Nanako was our teacher upstairs and she and Goh san gave us a lot of fun and learning today. Thanks Nanako and Goh san! We loved our day with you! In our KIDFIT class, we are still learning about our hearts; and by now all of us know that we need to eat good food, get good rest and exercise. This is not only good for our hearts but it is good for our other organs and our entire body.

 We also learnt that it is important to stretch your muscles when you do exercises. You can see from one of the photos here that we did some stretching in our lesson. In the morning when we arrived at school we had a number of things to use to help us make flags, representing the country that we come from. There were strips of coloured paper and markers for us to use as well. Some flags have a lot of detail and many shapes on them while others are quite plain in their design.  Our teachers helped us when we needed them. While some of our friends were making their flags, some of us were making cookies. And we alternated between these two activities for a large part of the morning. Each activity took quite a bit of time to complete.

   During circle time, we sang our “Hello” song and then did some hand games and sang “Open shut them” which we have not sung for a long time. Some of us remember singing this song when we were in the classroom downstairs. We sang a song in Japanese called “Genkotsu Yama No Tanukisan”. It is an old Japanese folk song with hand motions. It is about a baby raccoon drinking it’s mother's milk, taking a nap, being held, being carried on his mom's back, and then doing the same things the next day, over and over again.

 We then spread the enormous map of the world on the floor and covered it with plastic. We looked at the map and had to try to remember the country that we come from. Some of us come from a few countries so this was a bit confusing. We took the portraits that we had made of ourselves on the graphics tablet, and put ourselves on the country where we thought we came from. When we looked at the map we could see the cultural richness that we have in our class with so many of us coming from different places across the globe. Here is the list of countries for those of us who were at school today:

Allie – Belgium; Ryan – Australia; Jeremy – Canada; Tokutaro – Japan; Noa – Japan; Beckett – America; Sean – Russia; Ava – Germany; Clodia – England. Even though many of us have our origins in two or more countries, these are the ones that we chose today.

Downstairs, we did lots of painting and hand prints on two long pieces of paper. Most of us loved the paint on our hands but some of us were not too happy and wanted to wash them really quickly.

  We will show you some photos of one of our friends who didn’t like the paint on his hands later in the journal. You can see from his face, that he didn’t like it at all! Karl, our new little friend, is having a great time at school and he watches us to see what we are doing and then he copies us. When we first started at Ohana, we did this too while listening to our teachers as well.

At the second activity table, we did puzzles, played with magnets and drew pictures. We are enjoying drawing a lot lately and have new chalk for the chalkboard as well as the white board and dry erase markers. Our teachers sometimes have to watch us as we like to walk around the room with the drawing equipment. We are learning though that things have a place and are trying to be a bit more careful.

  During our KIDFIT class we played with the balls, hopscotch mat, rubber balancing beams, red pads, large green mat and the tunnel. We love this part of the lesson and also enjoy looking at the chef puppet who reminds us about eating healthy food etc. When Tony asked us if we could think of any healthy foods, Zachary answered: “Vegetables” which was correct.

During our circle time, we sang our favourite song “Let’s all hold hands in a circle” and then we sat down together and sang our “Hello” song. We have been singing some songs about love e. g. “Skinnamarinky dinky dink” and “Love is something”. We read the story “Show me”. In the story, the words ask us to show parts of our bodies. The really funny one was the one about our noses. At the end of the rhyme the words said that we should rub our noses together and we did! Eskimos kiss like this.

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