“I wrote a letter to my love”

We hope that all the “onis” were chased away yesterday and that everyone brought good luck into their home and lives for the coming year. One of Shelley’s students, who came to a lesson yesterday, saw the “mame” on the ground near the entrance to our school, and she asked her why they were there. Shelley told her about us throwing beans yesterday to chase the “oni” away from our school. Today was a busy day with some time for free play in the morning and then we played the game that Shelley played when she was little. First she showed us a piece of paper which we learnt is called an “envelope”. It had a flap and when you lifted the flap, there was a letter inside. It was a letter that was written to someone special; someone that she loved. She said that she loved us all, and then she sang the song and showed us how to play the game. She stood up and walked around the circle singing:

I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it

Someone must have picked it up and put it in their pocket

It wasn’t you, it wasn’t you, it wasn’t you, it was ………………..you!

She dropped the letter and the person had to put their hands behind their back, pick it up, and chase her. She had to try to sit down before they caught her. Phew! Each of us had a turn and our friends were too quick; we couldn’t catch anyone. It was fun and we got really excited when we received the letter and when we had to be chased. We then sat down at the tables and made a letter for our moms. First we drew something on a piece of paper; then we added some special stickers to the page; we realized that the large piece of paper would not fit inside the envelope, so we had to fold the page and make it fit inside; we placed it inside and then we put a piece of tape on the flap to seal it. Our teachers wrote "mummy on the outside of the envelope so that she knows it is for her.

In these photos, you can one of us drawing the letter, folding it, folding it again and lastly putting it in the envelope. We are going to give them to our mums when we go home.

After this activity we used our new hole punches. We have new ones that make only one hole and we punched holes in pink, red and white paper strips. Working out how to fit the paper in the punch is much easier when there is only one hole. We will use the red, white and pink circles for an activity on Monday.

Shelley went downstairs to meet a mum and her son, Markus, so Darren read a story called “I like it when.” It is all about feelings and what makes people feel good and also what makes them feel bad. We feel good when our friends share their things with us, when they are kind to us, when they say please and thank you, when they hug us, when they play with us, etc. We are talking a lot about our feelings and we think that when our mums get their letters from us, they will feel really happy. We don’t like it when our friends push us, when they take things from us, when they say things that are not nice etc. Feelings are tricky things and sometimes when people are little like we are, finding the words to express our true feelings is really hard. We are learning this all the time so that when we are bigger, it will be a lot easier.

We had a yoga lesson and did a few different positions including the prayer pose and the bridge. We have special pictures on cards that we try to follow as our guide however sometimes our bodies don’t seem to be able to do what we want them to do!

For music we sang “Love is something,” “I am special” and “Open them, shut them.” “I am special” is an echo song. Today we learnt that when you sing an echo song, someone sings words first and you copy them. When Shelley said “hello” we said “hello, when she said “I love you,” we said “I love you.” Then we sang the echo song and it has beautiful words all about being special.

Wishing you all a great weekend and see you on Monday when one of our classmate comes back. He has been away for quite a while!

Love Shelley and Darren