Happy birthday Zachary, Michaela and Nina
Today we celebrated our April birthdays in our classroom on the 1st floor. It was actually Michaela’s birthday today and she was joined by Zachary and Nina who will have their real birthdays later in the month. We had a wonderful time with Michaela’s mum and her grandfather who came from New Zealand, Zachary’s mum, his baby sister Sophia and his Tita Sally and Nina’s mum, Mitsuyo. Sharee, Michaela’s mum brought a popcorn machine to school.
We started off with all our friends who were having birthdays, sitting on chairs with their families. We looked at them and realised that they were having a birthday but they were missing something on their heads. Tomas said that they needed crowns. So we asked them to choose a friend to put a crown on their head. Zachary chose Vincent, Nina chose Lanah and Michaela chose Tomas. Then we all stood up and sang songs in a circle. We did some actions and then sang “If you’re happy and you know it”. We clapped our hands, stamped our feet, clicked our fingers, shouted ‘hooray’ and 
whispered ‘happy birthday’.
Then we all sat down again. Hisami chose one of us to give our friends their presents. Then we put a candle in the shape of number 3 inside a pretty flower shaped brownie. Zachary blew it out and then we lit again. Nina and Michaela each had a turn to blow the candle out and we sang “Happy birthday to you” in English and Japanese. Then we all went to the snack table where we had a beautiful place setting with a birthday plate and a brownie, popcorn, 
fruit and a drink. We want to say a huge thank you to the lovely mums who prepared our snack today and thank you too, for coming to our class so that we could celebrate with Michaela, Zachary and Nina.
During the rest of the morning, Luka, Michaela and Tomas made their animal pictures. They made a parrot or a bird and chose different collage materials to complete their pictures. Some of us did a bit of newspaper tearing and put the pieces onto double sided tape. We have almost completed putting our pictures into our workbooks and next week our teachers can paste the words 
onto the pages for us.
Upstairs, we made a flower using Lego blocks. We used green for the leaves, yellow for the center and red for the petals. Ethan and Ryan learnt how to move the castles/rooks on the chess board, together with the pawns. On the main table, we had the brown origami paper, which we tore into strips yesterday. Today we attached them to the large piece of paper that has grass attached to it. 
We pasted the pieces of brown origami and made them into tree trunks and branches. We added the white and pink cherry blossoms made from tissue paper, to the trees.
We went to the park early today because we had an early KIDFIT lesson. Our friends on the first floor were having a birthday party so they asked us if we would swop times for our lesson today. The park was warm and we saw a new flower growing in the bushes. Ava said that it was very pretty and she thought that it could be a rose. We looked at the sign that was next to it and it said that the
name of the flower was a geranium.
In our KIDFIT classes today, we all learned about our brains. We did some new exercises with new equipment. We used plastic rings as steering wheels, necklaces and we walked around them; we used green and red pieces of fabric which we balanced on with one leg; we used scoops and balls to throw and catch; and a parachute for bouncing fruit on and we also put our feet under the 
parachute and did sit ups. Ava said that our brains were important as they help us think; Olivia said that you need to put a helmet on to protect your brain when you are riding a bike. Tony told us that it is important to lie down and rest your brains at the end of the day.
We looked at lots of pictures during circle time of flowers and described them and their differences e. g. cherry blossoms are flowers that grow on trees and they have five petals and a yellow stamen. Tulips grow on a stalk in the ground and they have five or six petals.
We hope that all of our friends and their families have a wonderful weekend relaxing and having fun. See you on Monday for 
the start of a new week.
Love always Shelley, Darren, Christine, Maryna, Sharee, Liezel, Ayakam, Hisami, Goh and Nanako