Fantastic art creations
Whacky Wednesday it was not! It was more like wonderful creative Wednesday! We welcomed Sofie our new friend in the classroom downstairs and she had a great time, playing, exploring the classroom and making new friends.
Downstairs, we spent the entire morning working on our canvasses. We added cut up or torn photographs to them; some of us did more sponge painting; some of us put tape on them and some of us did marbling use green or white paint. They are filled with creativity and are a long way from being finished. We love the different effects on them all and cannot even imagine how they will end up.
You can see us working on our canvasses in some of these photos. At the second activity table, we had drawing using pencils and stencils. Our teachers are presenting us with different materials for drawing in order to help us 
develop our skills. We enjoy using a variety of materials and are also learning a new set of rules in our classroom. Our teachers are helping us with our play so that it stays contained in certain areas of the room. When we are engaged in social and dramatic play, we now stay inside the dress up area; when we are reading, we stay inside the library area. We have had a tendency to take many toys out at one time and then pack them into bags and containers which our 
teachers then have to search for, in order to complete puzzles etc. They have noticed that since we have more boundaries and limits, our play is more constructive and we are more productive.
We started our preparations for Hina Matsuri which is on Monday 3rd March. We will be having a huge display downstairs in the office area and today we used beautiful origami paper and made “ohinasama” and “odairisama” on a piece of paper. We had to fold the paper into a triangle shape and follow instructions carefully. We will eventually put them inside our portfolios with all of our other things that
we have made during the year.
We sat together on the carpet and sang our regular morning songs while holding hands in a circle. We guessed what animal Shelley was and then she 
held up a picture to show us. She gave us many clues and we were able to guess almost all of them. The give away in her clues was when she made the sound of the animals e. g. moo for the cow, neigh for the horse, ssssss for the snake etc.
On the main table in our classroom upstairs, we looked at a large variety of coins from the United Kingdom, Thailand, China, America, Hong Kong and Vietnam. We were very interested in them as they looked similar but they were really all different. Some of them had holes in the middle and some were multi-coloured; some too were different in size and shape. We experimented with the coins by placing a piece of white paper over them 
and then rubbing on the paper with a coloured pencil or soft pastel. The second activity that we did with the coins was with acrylic paint in gold, black, red and blue. We chose a coin and rolled the edges of it in the paint. We then propped our canvasses up and rolled the coins down the canvasses making interesting designs.
Beckett had another idea which was to press the head or tail of the coin in the paint and press the coin onto the canvas which made a circular shape. Tokutaro started to make spots on his canvas with cotton buds, just like the “Pop Art” art 
works that we saw at the art gallery. Jeremy, Jessica, Blue and Arata did marbling for the background of their canvasses.
During circle time, we looked at the large map on the floor and our teachers asked us to identify which countries we had visited on our journey for International Month. Tokutaro – Canada, Ava – Hong Kong, Beckett – UK. We remembered that Abiya had gone back to India. We set up chairs like an airplane and todays pilots were Beckett and Clodia while Ryan was the flight attendant, who served us curry and tea. We all made our own passports with 
our photos inside as well as small flags, representing the countries that we have already visited. The last thing that we did today was some yoga…..ohmmmmmm!
Love always
Shelley, Darren, Hisami, Ayaka, Liezel, Nanako, Goh, Christine, Maryna, Sharee