Our dioramas

When we came back to school, our “friend” dressed in the Ohana T-shirt and wearing a school cap, was at the door ready to welcome back after the long weekend. Hisami always gets a fright when she walks into the classroom as she thinks that there is a real person, who she doesn’t know, sitting there!

We hope that all of our friends and their families enjoyed the long weekend and did something special or just relaxed. We love going to school after a weekend as we like routine and miss our friends and teachers. This morning, we used Posca markers and painted the sides and back of our plaster of Paris butterflies. Our teachers decided that maybe it would be fun to create a scene with our butterflies. So we cut out leaves, made the veins on them with markers and spoke about what a butterfly’s baby is. We know that a mother’s baby is a child; a dog’s baby is a puppy; a cat’s baby is a kitten etc. What is a butterfly’s baby? Is it a butterfly? Hmmmmm……..we have a fun book called “The Monkey Puzzle” which is a wonderful story about a butterfly who helps the monkey find its mother. However the butterfly doesn’t know that the monkey’s mother looks like him because as she says: “None of my babies looks like me!” So we proceeded to make a caterpillar out of strips of paper. We folded them listening carefully to Hisami’s instructions and then added two eyes to one end of their body.

We placed the leaf, caterpillar and butterfly into our little tray and are going to take it home later. We loved having a real life scene with the things that we made.

After our activities, we went onto the mat and we sang our “Cabbetsu no” song. We remembered all the different caterpillar family members and then in the end, there were no more caterpillars…..just a beautiful butterfly.

After library time, we read the book “Are you my mother?” This followed on from our discussion about caterpillars, butterflies and mummies and babies. In this story, a baby bird hatches from its egg, while its mum is away from the nest.

The baby bird then goes looking for its mum, but of course it doesn’t know what its mum looks like. Maybe all babies do not know what their mum looks like; maybe they just sense who their mum is! We know who our mums are and all the members of our families and can see them in our Life Books.

William B, William L and Lucinda drew their bodies directly into their portfolio/workbooks. We spoke again about our bodies and touched our necks, shoulders, arms and legs. Some of us are still learning how to hold our pencils or markers with the appropriate grip. Our teachers are helping us with this and we are also playing a lot of games to build up our strength in our fingers.

We sang “There are seven days in a week” in preparation for putting the correct days etc on our calendar. We are trying to remember the initial sounds of the days of the week e. g. ‘mmmm” is the sound of the letter “M” which is the first sound of Monday; “ffffff” is the sound of the letter “F” which is the first letter of Friday etc.

On the tables near the carpet, we played a game of dominoes, matching pictures until we could not match anymore and we pegged socks and mittens onto the washing line. We also love playing with Lego at the moment and every time when we pack away, we take pieces of Lego and attach them to the Lego wall. The container for our Lego is so full at the moment; we think that we should attach a lot more of the pieces to the wall, when we come to school tomorrow.

Just as we were finishing our lunch and getting ready to have a rest, the earth shook. Our teachers felt it, and were worried about us. We didn’t feel anything and lay happily and peacefully on our mattresses, “snug like a bug in a rug”.

We hope that people all over Japan who felt the earthquake are safe. In fact, this week we will be doing our monthly Fire and Earthquake drill which is when we pretend that there is a fire or an earthquake.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.