Flapping fans and tissue paper flowers

We did a fantastic painting activity this morning. In fact, it is not really a painting activity as we didn’t use brushes; however the effect looks like a painting. On the table were two long strips of paper towel. In between the two long white strips were five containers of dye; red, yellow, blue, green and orange.

Inside each plastic container, there were droppers. We were going to squeeze the dyes onto the paper towel and make patterns. Our teachers encouraged us to try to cover all of the white so that there was only colour everywhere. The effect was great. What we actually did in the end, because there was still a lot of white showing, we folded the paper towel and patted the colours so that they would seep through into one another. Lilian said: “It is like a rainbow”. We also touched the paper and said that it was wet and cool.

Some of us stood squeezing the droppers for a long time and we loved the final result. Tomorrow we will make something with paper towel and dye but this time we will use pegs and fold a piece up into a small square.

At the other activity tables, Miyu and Koh made their butterfly, caterpillar dioramas, while Luka and Alexis played a balancing game with colourful, plastic cups. Alexis made hers go really high and she managed to balance them on top of one another. Luka wanted to also build with his cups however he couldn’t reach the top. He then stood on a chair and then he could reach higher than he even imagined.

We have a new toy which is almost like a puzzle but it is not a puzzle. It has a variety of locks on it e. g. there was a chain, a sliding lock, a hook lock and more. We discovered how to open them ourselves, look inside because there were pictures and numbers and then seal the locks. There is one lock that we are not sure how to open and our teachers decided to let us work it out by ourselves.

When we packed our toys away, we still could not open it and will try again tomorrow.

During circle time today, we spoke about our calendar and sang “There are seven days in a week”. We are all trying to remember the order of the days and the initial sounds of each day. Shelley gave us a clue that today started with “W” and it was the day following Tuesday. We eventually worked it out. Lucinda was the weather person and pointed to the words which we read out together. When we first selected the weather for today, we said that it was sunny but when we were walking to the park, we saw that there were clouds in the sky. Shelley asked us if we could remind her, when we returned to our classroom, to please look for the picture of clouds and the word that said cloudy. While we were lying on the carpet which has become our ritual after the park; and Hisami waves the fan to cool us off, William L said: “Cloudy”. This was our reminder to find the cloudy word and picture. “Thanks William!”

We read “The Monkey Puzzle” which followed on from our discussion about our mothers and whether we look like our moms and dads. We remembered that the butterfly said that it has babies that are not butterflies; they are caterpillars.

We looked at our names and then went to put them on the magnet board which says “I am here today”. Just before we went to wash our hands for lunch we played a game with fans and tissue paper flowers. Shelley learnt this game when she went to the old people’s home on Monday. The people were playing a game with these things. There was a long table and each person had to flap their fan hard enough to make their flower land on the other person’s side of the table.

We all had a turn and laughed when the flowers fell off the table. We realized that you have to flap the fans really hard to make enough air for the flowers to move. It was a fun day at Ohana.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.