Happy holidays and happy birthday
Even though today was a really short day, we managed to pack a lot into it. Downstairs, the focus of our day was the big birthday party for William, Haruto, Dominik, Miyu, Adrien and Sofie. We were sad that Sofie could not make it but she was sick at home today. We send her our love and happy birthday wishes and were extremely grateful to receive the snack that her 
mom prepared for the party. We had fabulous treats for the party which included strawberries with cream cheese, cupcakes, popcorn and fruit on skewers.
We started off our birthday celebration singing a new song about the colour that we were wearing today. We went all around the room until we came to the mums, dads and teachers and we even sang to them. Today we learnt two new colours which were grey and beige. Miyu chan’s mum had a grey top on and Liezel had a beige top on. Dominik’s dad had a black suit on and his mum had a top on that had pink flowers on it. Haruto’s mum had red pants on and a black top. Most of know 
the names of the colours and how to identify them.
Then when all of the mums and dads had arrived we all stood up and held hands and sang our favourite song which is………”Let’s all hold hands in a circle”. We did a selection of actions like jumping, nodding our heads, bending our knees….etc” Then our teachers asked us why we were all together with so many mums and dads and we told them that it was a birthday party. They then asked us if we
were happy or sad when it is a birthday and we of course, told them that we were happy. We sang “When you’re happy and you know it”. We love the part when we shout “Happy birthday” and when we whisper “happy birthday” at the end of the song. We then looked at our friends who were celebrating their birthdays and realised that they didn’t have their crowns on. Some of us volunteered to put crowns on their heads and then they looked like they were having a birthday. Our teachers asked all of their mums and dads, what they were like when they were babies and all of them seemed pretty much the same as they are now. We lit the candles for all of our friends; Adrien, Miyu and William had three candles in their cookies while Haruto and 
Dominik had two candles in theirs. We turned the lights off and it looked magical. Then they blew the candles out and we sang happy birthday in both English and Japanese. Just before we lit the candles we sang our candle song using our fingers as candles. This time we sang about “4 little candles” because we added one for good luck.
During the rest of the morning we had some activities to do at the tables and we sat and listened really well to a story called “Sleepy bears”. The story described a mummy bear and her baby bears just before they went to sleep. Each time one of them fell asleep, she sang a special song for them and when the last baby bear fell asleep, so too did the mum. They slept during winter and then 
when spring came they woke up. It will soon be spring here and we will be awake for the beautiful cherry blossoms.
Upstairs, we wanted to add a few more details to our castle, so we made flags to on the top. We used rectangles and triangles and when we drew on them, we made sure that we drew on both sides of the paper. We attached them to wooden poles and put them on the towers of the castle. The trees that we made yesterday were dry so we glued them around the castle to make a mini forest.
This morning, we wanted to help with some sorting and tidying so Jenny and Elena took out the
large cushions and some toys and started helping with vacuuming. It was fun to clean in a real way and not a pretend way, which is what we do sometimes in the dress up corner when we play house. We tipped the entire box of Lego onto one of the tables so that we could sort out all of the pieces as they sometimes get mixed up with other toys.
When we return from spring break, we will continue making castles and were so excited to hear this. We will use blocks to build them. Beckett found the knight costume in the dress up corner 
Momo found a princess costume so they dressed up and pretended that they were the owners of our castle. Allie helped strengthen the drawbridge using tape and we put down a roll of blue plastic to pretend that it was the moat. When we looked in the book “The Story of Castles”, we noticed that there are many roles and jobs that people have in castles. Beckett was the king, Ava was the queen, Momo and Jenny were princesses, Tokuator and Allie were merchants coming to sell their cloth to make clothes, Sean and Clodia were guards and Elena too was a merchant. Beckett and Ava were inside the castle and we each too turns to approach the castle to sell our wares. When we came near we asked “Can we come in?”. Sean and Clodia who were the guards checked to see if we were legitimate, safe to enter the castle. The girls curtsied to the king and queen and the boys bowed to them. They quite liked the cloth that the merchants were selling and bought it for two
gold pieces. In the book we also learnt why many of the castles were destroyed long ago. That was because of cannons. Today people try to find peace using words, when they do not agree with one another which we think is a good thing.
We had a final circle where we said goodbye one more time to our friends Jenny, Sean and Mom 
yand we sang “Now it’s time to say goodbye”. We wish all of our friends and teachers a wonderful spring break. We are looking forward to seeing you all on Monday 31st March for the start of our last term of school for this school year.
Love always, Darren, Shelley, Hisami, Ayaka, Liezel, Nanako, Goh, Christine, Maryna and Sharee