Welcome Jonah
We welcomed Jonah for his first day at our school today and he brought a long his teddy bear and a blue tennis ball. He enjoyed doing puzzles and making a gift for his dad for Father’s Day and we look forward to seeing him more during Summer School and for the start of the new school year in Autumn.
Our day started off with puzzles at the one table. They were all different colours with objects that in real life, are those same colours. On the yellow puzzle, there were ducklings, bananas, cheese, popcorn, and a yellow school bus. On the green puzzle there was a four leaf clover, a whole watermelon, a frog, lettuce and grass. When we had completed the puzzles, we went and sat with Liezel and tore newspaper into strips. These strips of paper will be used during our Summer School week called “Kings of Construction” so we are helping prepare for next week, 
while developing our skills too.
The last table with activities today was to complete our gifts for our dads for Father’s Day, since for many of us, today was our first day back at school since we ended our official school year, last week. We have a few more friends who still need to make theirs tomorrow and then we will be all set to give them to our dads.
When we packed away the toys, we sang a clean up song in Japanese which went like this
“Katazukete minnasan, minnnasan, minnasan
Katazukete minnasan, minnnasan”.
Then Hisami wanted us to sit on the carpet so she sang
“Minnasan swarimasho, swarimasho, swarimasho
Minnasan swarimasho, swarimasho”.
On the mat, Hisami spoke a lot of Japanese and she used props so we could all understand what she was saying. She started off with a microphone in her hand, so we knew that we were going to sing our “Hello” song. She first demonstrated with a panda, a deer and Minnie Mouse who all ‘sang’ their names and then we remembered what to do. “Anata onamae wa……………….Ana suteki na onamae ne”.
We all got a sticker after we had sung our names. We went all around the room and included 
our teachers when we asked them what their names were. Then Hisami showed us two hands. These are something new in our class. In Japanese “te” is a hand. We counted all the “yubi” in Japanese and then we had turns to count our own fingers in Japanese.
Ichi, ni, san, chi, goh, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, jyu”. Then we counted ten “kabutomushi” and they ate ten pieces of pizza. Talking about pizza made us hungry and we learnt that in Japanese, you say “Onaka ga peko peko desu” when you are hungry. We counted “jyu roku” 
children in our class just before we went to wash our hands for snack time.
Our story today was called ‘Otsuki sama’ which is a story about a moon. In the illustrations, the moon can be seen through the windows of a house and then we see it creeping up into the sky. The illustrations are simple and we could follow the story easily. We tried to make our faces, just like the moon with its tongue sticking out. Hisami sang the “Alphabet song” in English and then she showed us the letters of the Japanese alphabet and sang a song about them, in Japanese. We said the different sounds with her and then some of us could do them on our own. We said “ah, ii, oo, eh, oh”. Tomorrow we will learn to say some more sounds in Japanese using the microphone.
We went to the park and made a big mountain together, while digging in the sandbox. We did great team work as we put sand on the top, patted it gently to make it strong and tall. Hisami said that we did perfect team work. On the way back to school, we stopped at the fish pond. 
There were a few big orange fish and many small ones swimming in the water. Before we ate our lunch, we sang some Japanese songs.
“Kyo wa tanoshikatta. Minnasan, arigatou gozaimashita”
Love always Shelley, Hisami, Nanako, Sharee, Liezel, Ayaka and Goh.