Masquerade
We were so busy this morning since we had a big selection of activities to do. Some of them took a lot of time and careful concentration and some of them, we only spent a few minutes doing. We will explain everything in our journal here as it was a little complicated. Our first activity was using small pieces of wood in different shapes and creating a construction with them. Once we had made our construction we set about to attach the pieces of wood to one another using wood glue. We had spatulas and spread the glue all over the wood making sure that the wood stuck fast. The shapes of wood that we 
used varied from rectangular bases, small columns, cubes, and many other small pieces. You can see that we made some really amazing constructions.
The second activity was making snakes which at the end of the day, we were calling caterpillars. We made them using the lids of plastic bottles. It was surprising for us to see that you can get so many different coloured lids. There were blue, green, gold, black, red, white and yellow. Tomorrow we will make something else using lids which is a lot more complicated. We used spaghetti string and threaded it through a hole that Darren had drilled through the top of the lids. When we had used enough lids to make quite a long snake, our teachers tied the end for us and we added two eyes and a 
tongue that looks like a fork; because this is the shape of a snakes tongue.
Today we also helped prepare the small table that lives in the office area, for painting. It has some permanent marker marks on it so it needs to be painted. We used sanding blocks and rubbed the table as hard as we could while singing, 
“we’re sanding the table, we’re sanding the table, we’re sanding the table and making it nice and smooth”. Darren is going to paint it in the next week or so. Tomorrow our friends upstairs will sand it some more to make it even smoother.
The third activty today was adding some embellishments to our masks. They already have paint, sparkles and glitter on them so today we added feathers. Some of us were happy to try ours on and some of us preferred it when our teachers wore them. We took our masks and caterpillars home today but our wood constructions are still drying, so we will get them tomorrow.
During circle time, we sang “This is the way we saw the wood” together with many other actions that builders perform when they are constructing. We hammered the nails, stacked the bricks, mixed the cement etc. Liezel showed us pictures of different buildings and houses e. g. a nest which is a house for a bird, a web which is a house for a spider etc. Shelley then asked us where we live and some of us said that we live in a big house. She asked us so many questions: “What is a house for a shoe?” and we guessed: “A foot”. Then: “What is a house for food?” and we guessed: “Obento box”. “What is a house for a monkey?” and we guessed: “A tree”. This was such fun as we realised after playing this game and then listening to a fabulous story called “A house is a house for me”, that everything has a house. A kennel is a house for a dog and a dog is a house for a flea. A refrigerator is a house for food; a sandwich is a house for peanut butter and jelly; a sty is 
a house for pigs; a coop is a house for chickens and so too, is an egg. There were so many more.
After returning from the MPR where we played in the ball pool and Hisami played our piano which arrived today, from Shelley’s friends “The Sekimistu’s”, we went upstairs and had a circle time with blocks. Some of the blocks made a noise when you shake them and some of them are quiet. We all had a turn to shake a block and then place it in the quiet or noisy section. Then we counted them, when all of us had finished and we counted 10 noisy blocks and nine quiet blocks; so there were more noisy blocks than quiet ones. Thanks for a fabulous day and have a wonderful reunion with your family Liezel. We love you!
Love always Shelley, Hisami, Liezel, and Ayaka.