Welcome back to school

We had a great start to the term back at school with all of our friends and teachers. It was also a lovely sunny day which made all the difference to the light coming into our classrooms as well as our time outside, playing in the park.

Downstairs, we welcomed a new friend, Nina who will be turning three next month, together with Zachary and Michaela. During circle time, our teachers asked us if we knew, who our new friend was. Shelley went all around the circle asking us: “Is it Michaela?” “Is it Iva?” Each time we said: “No!” until we came to the very end. Then we realised that it was Nina. We enjoyed playing with her and she loved playing with all of the toys and games and activities.

  You can see from the photos that we were happy to get into the swing of being back at school today, dressing in the dress up corner and reading books. At the activity tables we had a number of things to do; we played with blue flubber, peggs on bowls, drawing, threading and Nina made her own placemat for lunch and snack time. In our circle, we all held hands and chose some actions to do with our friends and teachers. We jumped, nodded our heads, clapped our hands, stamped our feet, wriggled our noses, blew like the wind and bent our knees. Then we all sat down and sang our “Hello” song and some of us can sing all of the words together with our names. Then we looked at our mural with flowers, roots, stems, snails, ants and seeds. Some of us had a chance to point out the large flowers and the small flowers. We looked at the brown part and saw the creatures under the ground, the roots and the seeds. We learnt that all things that grow out from the soil need roots for a number of reasons. The roots keep the plants firmly in the ground; they drink water and get nutritients from the soil through their roots. We think that roots look like straws so we pretended to drink through straws just like plants do, through their roots. We also learnt concepts like above and below, on top and under. Plants grown above the ground however their roots and seeds are under the ground. We thought about snails and ants and other creatures that hide inside the soil. We noticed that flowers come in different shapes and sizes and will be planting some of our own soon.

   Upstairs, we were so happy to that our castle was still in tact and decided to dress up as people who work and live in castles. Darren bought some new costumes when he was in England over the spring break; Ava dressed up as Snow White, Tokutaro dressed up as a knight, Momo dressed up as a princess and Beckett was a police officer. They went into the castle and pulled up the drawbridge so that the “bad guys” could not get in.   Elena and Beckett glued tow pieces of styrofoam together to make a “keep” for the castle. A “keep” is a tower built within a castle where people can hide and be safe, if “bad guys” take over the castle. Elena and Beckett mixed paint and painted the entire piece of styrofoam so now we can add it on to the castle.

In our small circle, we welcomed all of our friends and teachers back from spring break and we all spoke about what we did during that time. (Some of the children spoke about previous trips that they have taken)

Tokutaro: I ran and drink milk. I go airplane and I go to Japan and I go to my house in Tokyo.

Ava: I went on an airplane to Bangkok and one plane to Tokyo. Thailand is not so far to Tokyo

Olivia: I go to an airplane and we travelled to Miami. I drink a lot of water and then I go to sleep. I went to the park.

Elena: I stayed in Tokyo

Jeremy: I go to mummy and daddy to New York.

Momo: I went in airplant to America and England.

In the park we enjoyed the warm weather and played under the cherry blossom trees. Our story today was called “King Bidgood’s in the bath tub”. We noticed in some of the illustrations in the story, that there were some men with shields with crests on them. We looked at our class shields in our dress up corner and saw that we had a lion picture on them. We decided to make our very own coat of arms and set about folding paper lengthwise, in order to cut out the shape of a shield. We then divided the shield into four parts and drew things in the four sections. We chose to draw castles, princesses, lions, dragons and crowns. We will work on these tomorrow when more of our friends come back to school.

Thanks for a great start to the new term and looking forward to seeing everyone again tomorrow.

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