Dinosaur Shadows

We had another dinosaur filled day today with lots of activities and dress up. When the children first arrived they noticed that the back of the classroom was all dark and there was a bright light in one corner. When they approached they soon realized that the light was pointing at the wall from an overhead projector. In the middle was a big triceratops shadow projected onto a big piece of paper. Using a marker we could then trace around the shadow to make a big picture. We could choose any toy dinosaur we wanted and when we put it onto the overhead projector it was enlarged onto the wall. First we needed to choose which color paper we wanted to use and taped it to the wall. When we put our chosen dinosaur on the projector, some of them looked so big that we needed to move the projector backwards or forwards to make it fit nicely on the paper. We could then choose which color marker we wanted to use and started to draw. It was a little difficult as we usually draw with our bodies in front of the paper but when we stood like this we couldn’t see the shadows and so we decided it was best to stand at the side and draw. Next week we will decide how to decorate them, with stripes, dots etc. Tokutaro and Ethan found the green class dinosaur costume but it was very big. They soon learned that if they sat down they could put their legs in first and then do the top half of their bodies. They looked great, really scary! On the main table we had the pencil drawing exercise with toy dinosaurs set up as this was very popular yesterday. Some of the children came back and wanted to continue their beautiful dinosaur drawings from yesterday too. The park was very warm and we made sure we all had sunscreen on today. Running around made us very hot and so we decided to spend more of our time in the sand-box with our friends. We got lots of water from the tap and made lots and lots of sand castles. We rushed back from the park to start our kid-fit exercises with Goh Kun the teacher for this week. Again we were learning all about ‘the brain’. We found out it controls our bodies movements and that we use it for thinking too. We had lots of fun with this and returned to the classroom hot and excited. In the library time we read a new book titled ‘Harry and the Dinosaurs go Wild’ which introduced us all to a new word and idea ‘Endangered Animals’. We all thought it meant dangerous animals, but it turned out it meant that there are some animals that need protecting because there are only a few of them left in the world such as pandas, gorillas and Sumatran tigers. We also thought a little about the word triceratops as this was in the book and realized there were other words beginning with ‘tri’ such as triangle, tricycle, triple which must mean 3 !! We practiced our secret songs for the end of year party next in both English and Japanese. We had lots of prompts to hold up and so needed to listen very carefully to the words to make sure we held up the things at the right time. In the afternoon we had a ‘dinosaur book time’ where we could choose any dinosaur book we wanted and found a great T-Rex puzzle book to look at. Have a great weekend, enjoy the sunshine and of course ‘Mother’s Day’ on Sunday. Have a great afternoon, All our Love, Darren and Nanako.