Planting flowers in our garden in Step Park

We planted flowers in our new garden in Step Park this morning and really enjoyed creating our own nature space there. We planted pansies in many colours and some other flowers. The people from Minato-ku who help us organize this, will bring our Ohana International School sign from Amishiro Koen and put it in our new garden in Step Park. We will be able to take care of the flowers more easily as the park is very near to our school.

We watered the soil around the flowers afterwards and then noticed when we were walking back from school, that there were some rain clouds in the sky. We think that they may get a good watering later today. Some of us love hanging upside down in the park, which makes our teachers quite nervous. We just love moving our bodies and testing them to see what they are able to do.

We played a game with letters of the alphabet, matching them on an alphabet chart. They are magnetic so we put the chart on a board and then looked carefully for the letters to match.

We have been singing songs with sounds and naming things that we think start with different letters/sounds as we develop our pre-literacy skills. This is an integral part of our learning each day and we learn it in a fun way, experiencing it as a game, rather than a lesson, which when we are older, we will understand the meaning more. We have changed the place where we keep our names now and have moved them onto one of the white boards on our closet doors. We will use the magnet board at the entrance to our room for other activities.

During the morning, we received a huge box of toys from one of Shelley’s old students and were excited to get magnetic letters in both upper and lower case. There is also a speaker which says the name of a letter and the sound that it makes. Earlier in the morning we played with the lower case letters and at the end of the day, we played with the upper case ones.

At the activity tables, we continued playing with the rice on the large sand tray, together with spoons, plastic cups, marbles and feathers. We really enjoy these sensory experiences and in fact, some of us love touching the artificial grass on our room divider while we are waiting in line to go and wash our hands.

Hisami completed a few more faces with us today and William B made his placemat. Our teachers laminated it during the morning so that he could use it at snack and lunch times today.

Vincent, Miyu and Lilian completed the 54 piece puzzle today and they enjoyed the challenge of it so much, that they did it a second time during free play, this morning. Shelley sat with a few of us to draw our self portraits, some of which are already up in the classroom with the stories about our names.

We played with dominoes at a small table this morning and understand how to wait for our friends to have their turn before we take ours. We are also skilled at matching and had fun completing this game during free play time. We still love dressing up and engaging in dramatic play during free play time, but now we are so busy being at the specific tables, we don’t seem to have so much time anymore. We know that life is full of changes and this is just another one of them; not bad but just another change! Alexis loves the high heel shoes, and wears them every day; even during library time.

Our story this morning was another one that Lilian donated to Ohana for her third birthday. It is called “Harold and the purple crayon”. Harold loves purple and gets out of his bed, on an imaginary journey with his purple crayon. He draws almost all of the things that he wants to see and do which is extremely convenient. The only problem is at the end when he gets really tired and wants to go to bed, he cannot find his house. He draws many buildings with windows but none of them is his house. Eventually he remembers that the moon was just above his window and he arrives home safely. Even before he could put his purple crayon down, he fell fast asleep. Sometimes we have to be careful where our imagination takes us.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel