Flowers, flowers everywhere

On the tables this morning there was a new Montessori activity which Eito wanted to be the first to try. There was a wooden frame with different sized holes in it along with some nuts and bolts of different sizes. He needed to select the biggest bolt and push it through the largest hole. Then he needed to put the nut on the other end and twist it on until it was tight. Then he selected the next biggest bolt and continue until all 6 of the nuts and bolts were tight. It was a little difficult at first to hold the bolt in place while twisting the other end but he soon mastered it. Noa and Olivia made their plaster hand copy today by pressing their hands in playdough and then helping mix some plaster of Paris with water. We poured the plaster in very carefully and had a little bit spare which we poured into a butterfly mould. The whiteboard/chalkboard was very popular this morning too and many of the children drew their faces on it carefully. Riko and Ava helped to put the small electronic piano together and they enjoyed listening to the built in tempos and adding their own piano play over the top. We needed to pack away a little early today as we had a special activity in the park after snack time. On the whiteboard the teachers drew a little seed, then added roots, a stalk, leaves and then a pretty flower on top. We used Jessica’s lifebook to show how Jessica had grown and changed. We saw how her hair had changed, how her face shape had changed and then how she had grown so much taller. In the park when we arrived there were lots and lots of pretty flowers in lines and an area of earth which had been prepared with ditches to plant the flowers. One by one we removed the plastic pots from the bottom of the flowers and put them carefully into the ditch. Using our hands we helped push the dirt in to cover the roots of the flowers. We planted all of the flowers with our friends from buds and petal classes.

The last thing we needed to do was to give them some water. We were very careful to only water the ground around the bottom of the flowers and not the leaves or flower parts.

It took us quite a while to do this but we still had plenty of time to run and play. When we returned to the class we got out the tape measure to measure everyone’s height using ‘centimeters’. This was a new word for us and it is quite long and so we think we may need to practice with it a little more. Once we had measured our own heights using the tape measure we wrote them on the whiteboard next to our names. It was good practice for us to write some numbers and we could see all our friends names and writing too. Have a great afternoon.

All our Love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako