Magic water bottles

Miyu chan came to school today and we were all happy to see her and know that she was better. Our days are flowing really smoothly because many of us attend more often and we have a lot more continuity. Today we had a few activities to do as part of our free play time. On the tables in the back part of our room, we had one table with a 49 piece puzzle that we did as a group and at the other table we had a matching game. The puzzle was quite a challenging one as we did not have a picture to follow but rather we just had to look carefully at the pieces and match the colours and shapes. We are able to work well in small and big teams and for this activity our small team did a great job! Well done Vincent, Lilian, Alexis and Koh chan.

The second activity was with matching cards. We are really good at matching the same pictures and were able to name almost all of the pictures on them. At the large activity table, Hisami sat with us and together we made magic coloured bottles to match the colours that are on display on our shelf. We made pink, blue, yellow, green, red and orange. First we put sparkles, beads, glitter and sparkly shapes into the bottles, then we added coloured water. We mixed a small drop of food colouring with water in order to create the appropriate colours. Now they are on display with the coloured objects. At the very end, we screwed the lids onto each bottle, taped them tight in order to make the secure. We shook them and watched how the sparkles and shapes floated in the coloured water.

We sat at one of the activity tables and made drawings using markers, sparkly pens and coloured pencils. For some of us, when we sit and do a drawing we pick up the drawing tools and make patterns which our teachers think is fine. However, they also believe that we are able to draw specific shapes and identify them as objects. Shelley sat with us and we spoke about what we wanted to draw. She also drew a picture which inspired us. When we had completed our drawings, we then told her what we had drawn and she wrote the words down. Our teachers spoke about whether we should display our work or not; especially since it always goes into our work books. They thought that we would display some of our group projects and others we would put straight into our portfolios, as we are doing with this one.

The last activity we did was with shaving cream, food colouring, silver foil, scrapers, eye droppers and paper. We put shaving cream onto a sheet of silver foil, spread it all over so that was smooth. We then dropped food colouring onto the shaving cream. We used a thin paint brush to make swirly patterns in the shaving cream; then we placed a piece of paper on the top, pressed it down gently and then picked it up. We scraped the excess shaving cream off and this is what we saw…………………marble painting designs. When we had made a few pictures we ‘dived’ our hands into the shaving cream and had a fantastic sensory experience.

We did some Yoga with Hisami and sat in certain postures and stretched our bodies while breathing and listening to our breath. Then we sang and danced to music and of course we sang “Let’s all hold hands in a circle”, one of our all time favourites. Hisami also read a story to us called “One duck stuck”. It is a rhyming story with numbers and animals in it. In our circle time we sang a new greeting song; “Hello ……..ohiyo gozaimasu, how are you today tell us”. We learnt the words to say when our friends sing our name and will practice again tomorrow.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel