The prettiest girl in Tokyo today
And the sun came up, should be the name of our story today but it wasn’t. We were really happy that we could go to the park even though the weather changed while we were there. It started off really sunny and then the clouds came over and it became a lot cooler. The weatherman is predicting rain this afternoon and when we looked at the clouds, it looked like he was going to be correct with his prediction.
We are preparing for “Kodomo no hi” which is on the 5th May. We used bubble wrap and paint in a similar way to what Junko san, Nanako’s friend, did with us last week. Instead of putting paint onto the bubble wrap with our hands, we put paint on using paint brushes. We then put a large piece of white paper on top of it and patted the paper down onto the bubble wrap. When we picked the paper up, there was a beautiful colourful design on it. We all made a painting in 
this way and we made a few extra ones for our friends.
Shelley started working with us individually in preparation for Mother’s Day. She is asking us questions about our mums and we are trying our best to answer them. When our mums come for our Mother’s Day breakfast, they will be able to see what we did. We did some puzzles at the activity tables as well and are almost ready to move on to doing more difficult ones. When we start to do ones with more pieces in them, we think that it would be good if our teachers sat with us and gave us encouragement in 
order to motivate us. Sometimes we give up easily however if we have something or someone to motivate us, this helps a lot.
Hisami read us a book called “The Big Yellow Flower”. It was about spring time and reminded us what seeds and plants need in order to grow. We know that
they need water, sunshine, shade and soil. We know too that the water can come from a watering can and if it rains, we do not need to water the flowers.
We sang our caterpillar song in Japanese and also our tulip one. Shelley started telling us her special story about Wally 
the Whale. Wally is a really big whale that loves children but most children are scared of him because he is so big. When the children are swimming in the ocean and they see Wally the Whale swimming nearby, they all rush out of the ocean onto the beach. Wally the Whale is really sad about this and he has no idea how to make them think or feel differently about him. One day while he is swimming in the deep ocean, he meets a family on a boat and he entertains 
them with his dives and flips because he is so happy. There are two little children on board and all his antics are especially for them. He swims away full in his heart hoping that other children will feel the same way as they did. We look forward to hearing more of Wally the Whale’s adventures during the next few months.
Ava and Vincent saw huge ink stamp pads when they came to school this morning. Next to them were pictures of flowers. What were we going to do? We were going to make our own flowers using our fingers and the ink. We were not only going to use our fingers but we were also going to use our thumbs. We dipped our fingers onto the stamp pads and then made flowers.
Ryan brought in a nature book that he wanted to show us. There were lots of pictures and quiz questions in it. We sat together with him in the library and
looked at the pages. Sophie completed her synmmetrical butterfly painting and Marc is really interested in playing Chess each day. He challenged some of us during the morning and then he took on Darren with the castles/rooks and pawns.
In the park, we noticed some beautiful purple flowers hanging down from a wooden structure. They felt tickly when we touched them and our teachers lifted us up one by one, so that we could run our hands over them. We also looked at the area in the park where we will be planting flowers so that we can have a “Garden in the Park” at Step Park too. We will probably just use this area for our garden since it is nearer to our school.
Circle time saw us singing some song and one of our old favourites which is “Old MacDonald 
had some vowels”. We went through all of the vowels and practiced writing them in the air. Then we moved to the activity tables and practiced writing them inside our books with a pencil. We thought of words that start with the “u” vowel sound and found unicorn, uniform, umbrella, up, underwear (which made us laugh a lot). Our story at the end of the day was called “Mrs. Nelson is missing” and it is about a teacher that is missing.
We hope that everyone stays warm and dry on this cold and rainy evening and look forward to seeing our friends and teachers tomorrow.
Love always
Shelley, Darren, Christine, Maryna, Goh, Nanako, Sharee, Liezel,
Ayaka and Hisami