Where are the little girls you sent me.......
“Where are the little girls you sent me?
Where are the little girls that cried?
Wasn’t it yesterday when they were born?”
These are the words of a beautiful song called “Sunrise Sunset” and over the many years that Shelley has been teaching little children like us, she and her class have sung this song at the end of the year party. But we are not singing it this year!
Today was a really fantastic day at Ohana. Jou kun settled soon after his mum left and even though there were a few times when he cried in between, he was happy for almost the entire time that he was at school. We were all happy too! We like to know that our friends feel happy when they are with us at school, learning and having fun. We played with trains and cars on the mat to start and we soon gravitated towards the activities at the tables, because the light box was switched on. Darren had pasted a piece of paper with different lines and dots on it and we could trace some of the patterns.
Noah was very busy practicing how to write his name at the office table. He is doing such a good job, soon he will be able to write it without his flashcard. After snack time, we went straight to the library and it seems that there has been a big turnaround in our ability to concentrate for a long time. We are now able to sit and listen attentively to story time for between fifteen and twenty minutes. This gives us many more opportunities to listen to great stories and today, once again, Renshi chose the one that he wanted Shelley to read to us. We all learnt something new from it! The story was called “Franklin and the tooth fairy”. Franklin is a turtle and his best friend is a bear. In this story, the bear loses a tooth and when Franklin realizes that he doesn’t have any teeth, he gets really upset. The bear told him that when you lose a tooth, the tooth fairy comes and gives you a present, recognizing that this is the time when you are growing older. Oh boy! Franklin is really upset now as he also wants to be acknowledged for growing older……….. We recommend that you read it!
We practiced some of the songs and action games we are doing for our party next week and had a wonderful time 
singing and dancing and having fun. We sang a song that we learnt a long time ago about massage. We sat behind one another and sang the song while massaging our friends. The songs that our teachers chose for us to sing next week are some of our favourites. Some we sing without the CD but the action ones with words, we sing together with a CD. We are also going to do some yoga at the party because it has been an integral part of our daily programme and we absolutely love our yoga lessons! We did a few of the postures today with Darren reinforcing the theme, “I can……” We can make our bodies into a table; we can make our bodies into a tree; we can make our bodies into a flower etc.
At the activity tables, we continued threading on a piece of wire and we had play dough and free drawing at the office table. We also have the white board available throughout the day. In our morning circle time, we sang our “Hello” song and we also sang a song about more things that we can do e.g. We can put our chins on our knees; put our ear to our shoulder; put our elbow on our knee; touch our ears with our toes; touch our nose with our toes; and of course we learnt that we can trace lines and dots. We can also thread beads and things on a thin piece of wire. Jou kun surprised everyone with his fine motor skills. He was able to thread small beads onto the wire and made a beautiful bracelet for his mum.
Love Shelley and Darren