What's in the bottles

Today started off a lot cooler than yesterday but before we knew it, the sun was shinging brightly and we could feel the heat. We started off with three activities at the tables. The first one was continuing threading beads, which some of us did yesterday. In fact, many of us who had made a necklace yesterday, still wanted to make another one today. Some of us made bracelets too and Pauline liked hers so much from yesterday, that she wore it to school today.

At the second activity table, we played with flubber and rolled it, cut it, pulled it and made shapes with it. We are able to concentrate on what we are doing while chatting to our teachers and friends. It is a skill that we are developing because it is not always so easy to do two things at the same time.

The third activity was something that made us think a lot. On the table, where we have six rectangles, there were different coloured pieces of paper. There was one in each rectangular space and on the paper, were four plastic containers with different coloured plastic lids in them. On the table, in front of each piece of paper was a lead pencil. We looked at our teachers for guidance, however they wanted us to do whatever we wanted to. They wanted us to be creative and find our own way to use the materials. Some of us drew on the paper with a pencil; some of us emptied the lids out onto the table and looked at them. They were not all the same; some were large and fat; some were short and fat; some were long and thin; some were transparent and others had many more interesting characteristics. It was interesting for our teachers to observe us at this activity. They would like to present us more open ended activities that give us the opportunity to create for ourselves rather than wait for instructions on how to do something.

During the morning, Hisami sat with us on the carpet and she played a listening and identification game with us. There were three plastic bottles placed on the floor for us to see. Hisami showed us each bottle and because they are transparent, we could see inside them and identify what materials there were. One of them had wooden beads in it, one of them had coloured pom poms in it and the third one had tiny colourful beads in it. She shook the bottles and we heard the different sounds that they made with the different materials inside them. Then we had turns to shake them. Then there was the guessing part; she chose one of us to come and stand next to her. She covered our eyes and one of us shook the bottle. We had to try to guess which bottle it was. Was it the bottle with the wooden beads in it? Was it the bottle with the coloured pom poms in it? Was it the bottle with the tiny coloured beads in it? We tried our hardest to listen to the sounds and guess carefully.

We sang the cabbage song and the tulip song. Then Shelley did the story of the “Very hungry caterpillar” with us. She used props and we had to guess what came next. She started off: “In the light of the moon, on a little green leaf, sat an……..” She put pizza on it but we shouted: “No”. Then she put an ice cream on the leaf and again we shouted: “No”. Then Mika said: “An egg” and she was correct. Shelley found an egg and placed it on the leaf and then we went through the story, which we love telling, listening to and speaking about.

We sang “There are seven days in a week”; “Butterfly” and we sang a brand new song designed to get us to hold hands together with all of our friends and teachers. It had a new tune and some new words together with actions.

Love always Shelley, Hisami, Liezel, Nanako, Ayaka and Goh.