Happy Easter

Today brought to an end another wonderful week of creativity, fun, learning, laughter and more at school. Downstairs we started off our day working on our Mother’s Day cards and adding a red hand print to them. Hisami san said that she was going to do a messy activity but we didn’t think that it was so messy. Shelley’s activity was much more messy; we will tell you about it later in this journal. Hisami painted our hands which was really ticklish and then we stamped our hand print onto the card. At the same table we did cutting and really enjoy just snipping away at scraps of paper, left over from previous activities.

At the second activity table we completed our trees using brown origami and double sided tape. Vincent, Lilian, Adrien and Michaela did most of the tearing and pasting and then Iva and Hana helped them put leaves on the trees. This art work has been made with the sole purpose of us strengthening our pinching grip and the added bonus is that we are making something that is evolving before our very eyes, all the time.

Today our trees grew leaves and our bulbs outside in their pots are growing taller and taller. On Monday, our trees may change once again….who knows?

Since it was raining, we spent the entire day, busy as bees inside our classroom and also having our KIDFIT lesson downstairs in the MPR. Our KIDFIT lesson focused on our brain and we enjoyed using the equipment that we started using last week. We had plastic scoops and balls for throwing and catching. We threw

the ball up and also rolled it along the floor. We stood on small pieces of fabric and tried to balance on one leg. We bounced an orange balloon on the parachute and of course we shouted with delight when we did this.

When we came back to our classroom we all found a chair and sat at the table. Shelley dramatised a chicken making a noise and we had to try to guess what animal she was. Lilian knew that she was a chicken. Then she sat down on a cushion and made clucking noises like a hen. We were not sure what she was doing and then when she got off the cushion, there was an egg. It was a pink egg and we were not sure what would come out of the pink egg. We thought that maybe a chicken would come out but we were not sure. We then looked at a really big egg which is called an ostrich egg. We were not sure what would come out of such a very large egg. We looked inside as there was a large hole and Tomas said: “The chicken can go inside”. Adrien said: “The chicken can come out through the hole”. Our teachers didn’t say anything other than the egg came from a bird called an ostrich. One of us asked: “Why?” and they said: “Because this is the kind of egg that the mommy ostrich lays”.

After we put stickers on our Easter Eggs, Shelley hid our egg. We had to go to the carpet and see if we could find them. It was so funny because they were all hidden underneath one of the hats from our dress up corner. We then put our hats on with our eggs hiding underneath them. Happy Easter everyone!

Today upstairs we worked on our painting skills. Allie wanted to add more detail on her flower painting and Ethan, Ryan, Noa, Jeremy and Jessica all made some beautiful flowers using different colours of paint. On one of the other tables, we had the coloured wooden blocks and cards with pictures of spring flowers, butterflies and other creatures. We learnt a new word today called ‘symmetrical’. We learnt this word because we painted on one half of a piece of paper and then folded it over to create the same pattern on both sides. We had to work quite quickly because the paint was going to dry. We made spots and patterns with the paint and once the page was folded, we smoothed the paper and were amazed when we opened up the paper……..

We had created a ‘symmetrical’ pattern. It was a long complicated word for us to remember and we repeated it a few times. It also has a musical sound to it so we broke it up into syllables and clapped it.

Nanako enjoyed looking at the “Where’s Wally” book with us. We had to try to find Wally among all the detail on each page. We read “Peter Rabbit” by Beatrix Potter which is a famous series of books about Peter Rabbit who always gets into trouble with Mr. MacGregor. He likes to go into Mr. MacGregor’s garden and eat the lettuce, carrots and parsley that he is growing there.

During circle time, we all took part in a group Chess game using the pawns and the castles or rooks. We reviewed the moves that both pieces can make and had a great time playing with one another. Since tomorrow is the start of the Easter weekend, we had an egg hunt in our classroom. Our teachers hid twelve eggs and when we had found them all, we chose a colour and decorated our egg with stickers. Beckett noticed that the two sides of the egg when opened were ‘symmetrical’.

In the afternoon, we practiced using scissors to cut our symmetrical butterfly paintings out. We then put some detail on them like eyes, antennae etc.

We want to wish all of our friends and their families a very Happy Easter and a wonderful weekend. Looking forward to seeing eveyrone on Monday, especially those friends who have been away on holiday and some who have been sick at home.

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