Sayonara Sean, Jennifer and Momo

The last week of this term is here and we have learnt so many things, celebrated many things and we are nearly ready for a holiday. Today upstairs, we had a farewell party for Sean, Jennifer and Momo. They are all going off to Japanese school and big school and while we will miss them, we wish them good luck and are happy that we will still see them in some of our after school classes. Jennifer’s mum Rie, her dad, Darren, Momo’s mum, Yuriko and Sean’s parents, Marina and Oren all came to celebrate their achievements at Ohana.

Each of them brought along something to share with us today. We started off by singing “Open them, shut them” singing it with the correct actions to the words and then we sang it with opposite actions to the words. We sang our good morning song and went around the entire circle, singing “my name is ………………” which of course took a long time, as there were so many of us. We asked Momo, where she was going to, she said: “Japanese School”. Then we asked Jennifer: “Where are you going to?” and she replied: “Japanese school” and then we asked Sean where he was going to and he said: “A new school”.

 Sean then showed us one of his favourite number games with different coloured stickers. We all took turns finding the numbered squares on the racing car picture and then out the correct number of stickers down. When  the game awas finished, we had created a beautiful coloured racing car picture as you can see in the photograph. Jenny brought along her favourite book called “The snowman and the snowy day”. She read along with her dad and all of us listened really carefully. Momo brought along a beautiful magnetic Hello Kitty dolls house which she told us, she received at Christmas a year ago. She told us that her favourite room was the bedroom. We made special cards for Jenny, Momo and Sean which we presented to them and then we all gave one another many hugs. We had a wonderful picnic lunch outside in the park, as the weather was really warm today. Many of us went to the park for the first time without our jackets which made us feel lighter and more free.

When we first arrived at school this morning, we had the papier mache base for our castle on one of the activity tables. It had dried over night, so today we were able to paint it. We used lots of grey and green to make rocks and grass. Allue, Ethan, Ryan, Ava, Tokutaro, Elena and Beckett all wanted to have  a turn using the big brushes for decorating. With so many of us having turns, we managed to finish painting the entire base today.

  On the second activity table, we finished painting our pine cone trees. We painted the brown trunks of the trees. Our castle it taking shape and we are looking forward to hopefully finishing it before the end of the term.

Downstairs, we had three four activities at the tables when we arrived in the morning. At one table, Hisami did butterfly painting with us on cards. We used cotton buds and spoons to put different colours of paint on one side of the card. We then folded the card over and spread the paint and ………………the same pattern was on the other side of the card.    We had play dough at another table with some utensils. We love rolling and cutting and especially like the play dough because it has a sweet smell.

Shelley sat at one of the tables while we glued colourful paper and see through pieces of paper on the South African collage we made earlier in the month. We like to recycle as much as we can in our classroom, so we are remodelling the map of South Africa was some bright collage materials. We will then use the entire collage to make birthday hearts for our friends. Then we will all have been involved in creating the hearts for everyone, throughout the year.

On the really large table, where Hisami was working, we also played with some puzzles and toys. We are growing up so much each day and our teachers especially noticed this because we had two circle times today. We sat for a long time in the second circle time, which really surprised them.

 In our first circle time, we sat together on the cushions and Shelley read a story to us about the days of the week. It is called “Today is Monday”. On each day of the week, a different animal eats a different food e. g. on Monday a porcupine eats string beans; on Tuesday a snake eats spaghetti; on Wednesday an elephant eats zoop etc. We tried to remember the days of the week in order since we have our days of the week song. Then we sat together and clapped the syllables in our names. Hisami was three claps; Marc was one clap and Hana was two claps. Our names were either, three, two or one clap. The claps represented the syllables.

   The second circle was much longer than the first one. We held hands in a circle and did a few actions together. Then we learnt a brand new song which went like this:

‘Concentration, elimination keep the rhythmn, keep the rhythmn to the beat, subject…………………’ Then our teachers chose a subject and we had to think of something that belonged to that subject. The topics that they chose were animals, then colours and then food. We had to first think of an animal which we all did; then we sang the words again and thought of different colours and the last one was food. We stood together and went around the circle giving each of our friends a turn to think about what they wanted to say. This circle went on for a really long time and as we said before, our teachers were impressed by our ability to focus on the topic and wait for our turn.

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