Our person is now complete

Today started off with many of us arriving at school just before the “heavens opened”. Our teachers said that this expression is used when it suddenly rains really heavenly. Some of our parents got caught in the big rain, running to their cars. The whole day it rained until just before we went to rest. It was lovely to be able to curl up on our mattresses at the end of the day and enjoy a little nap after a busy day in our classroom.

We are perfecting the art of doing jigsaw puzzles and while we have an insatiable appetite for them, our teachers are presenting more and more of them to us each day. Today Miyu and Alexis did one of them together and with some reluctance, shared the responsibility of doing it. Some of us really like to do things on our own which our teachers think is absolutely fine. It is also good though to work together and share sometimes too.

At the activity tables, we had a selection of shapes to cut out. The various shapes were drawn on different coloured paper and we could cut freely, as much or as little as we wanted to. Our special activity, rather the one that we felt was the most special, was painting plaster of Paris moulds of butterflies. We had many colours of paint to choose from and then we sprinkled glitter. Tomorrow we will use coloured Posca markers and decorate the other side of the butterfly and we can also do the sides of the mould, if we want to. Our teachers are not sure what we can make with them but will think about it. We also did drawing and in the back area of the room, we had two tables; one with a magnet on a stick to move insects around a board and the other game had a magnifying glass. The magnifying glass game was filled with interesting things from nature and life. When we looked through the magnifying glass we could see so many tiny details on each thing which was fascinating.

During free play time, we made a train with the chairs which we all carried from the table area into the back part of our room. We lined the chairs up and decided to go on a trip. Koh was one of the children who had the idea to make a train so he decided where we were going to go. Apparently, he works in an office in England, so this is where we were going on the train. Our train was an “overnighter” as England is really far. We slept on the train and we ate on the train. And then we arrived in England.

During library time, our teachers read some stories to us and some of us looked at our Life Books, which we love looking at. Shelley read “One Duck Stuck” and at the end of the story Mika said that she really liked it. Shelley had a meeting so Hisami and Liezel sat with us for morning circle and spoke about our Life Books. She took out her Life Book and showed us pictures from when she was a little girl, growing up and then now. We looked at the photos of her when she was five or six years old, and couldn’t recognize her or imagine that once upon a time, she was little. When she showed us Shelley’s book, Koh said: “No!” He couldn’t imagine that Shelley was once little. Then Shelley sat with us and opened her book and again we kept on saying: “No!” As she turned the page and we saw her getting older, then we recognized her more. We spend time each day, when we are reading books in the library, looking at our own books. We look forward to receiving the books from all of our class mates soon so that we can see when they were babies as well.

We danced to the Wiggles CD and sang some of favourite songs e. g. “Where is Thumbkin” and “Do the monkey?” We sat on the mat together and started to make the head for our large person who we still haven’t named. Today Marina brought us a pair of stockings and we used the one part for the head and then our teachers tied the two long parts that are usually for the legs. When we looked at the two long pieces hanging, we thought that they were the persons pony tails and then we said to our teachers: “It must be a girl”. They were not sure why we thought that it must be a girl and we told them: “It has long hair”. They told us that sometimes boys have long hair but we were very clear about our person’s gender. We then spoke about what we needed to make a face and we set about making it. Our person is now complete with a face and a hat.

There is an Educational Event at The American Club next month and we will be using our person for our Ohana International School display.

Thanks for a fabulous day.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.