I am good at smelling

Ethan and Ryan and Noa had a busy morning today when they arrived at school. After completing their morning jobs they immediately started by making their plaster hand copies. They were really excited to do this and enjoyed mixing the plaster. We have nearly completed all the children’s hands and there are just a few left to cast.  We managed to measure Adam’s height today in free play-time using the tape measure and found he was 105 centimeters tall. He then went to the whiteboard where he wrote his height next to his name with his friends. We packed away a little early as we had a special activity this morning organized by one of the parents. Before they arrived the ‘teacher’s helpers’ for today organized all the children to sing one of their favorite songs ‘Open them, shut them’. Together we then checked using the tape measure to see how much the children had grown since they were born. They were really surprised to see that most of them were at least double their birth height. We then brought out a set of electronic weighing scales and we were soon all measuring our weight. The teachers told them their weight in kilograms now and then how many times greater their weight was compared to their birth weight. For many of them it was between 5 and 10 times their original weight. We will do a measuring activity next week using the weighing scales again. We were so happy when Bill (Ava’s father) arrived and brought in a big box of exciting looking things to show us. First we all sat in a circle and Bill told us that today we would be learning all about our sense of smell. Bill showed us a jar filled with rice and said that our sense of smell picks up all the bits floating in the air like the rice in the jar jumping around. The glasses that he showed us are a special shape to make all the nice wine smell stay inside the glass and there are more than 10,000 different smells in the world. Wow!!  Today Bill said we are going to be practicing with some samples he had brought as we could learn to recognize different smells just like we learn our ‘A, B, C’s’. We then got to smell the first of the jar contents and found this one quite easy; lemon. We passed the jar around the circle to all of our friends and then back.  We got the chance to smell 13 different things starting with: lemon, strawberry jam, soap, onion, rosemary, coffee, toast, green beans, burnt matches, cheese, dirt, leather and lastly chocolate. Bill then showed us a chart showing us how it is like a map and different parts of our noses detect different smells. We were very lucky because Ava’s daddy brought one last thing for us to smell and taste. He poured a yellow liquid from a bottle into some real wine glasses. We had to be really careful as they were made of glass. First we swilled the liquid around in the glass to make the smell come out and then we were able to smell it. It smelled just like apples and when we drank it we found we were right, it was apple juice, yummy! Thank you bill for a wonderful activity and the yummy apple juice, we all loved it. We headed for the park and took our snack with us today. It was nice and sunny and we all had a very active time with our friends in petals class. Have a great weekend. All our Love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako