Moving our bodies on a Monday
Okay, we are back on track with the journals and our teachers sent the Friday one to all of our mums and dads this morning. Today was a great start to the week “weatherwise”, and if today was measured on a “fun scale”, it would probably have been an 11! We had a great time with Tanaka sensei in our gymnastics class. When he came into the classroom we couldn’t remember 
his name and then our teachers helped us. We hope that next week we can remember Tanaka sensei’s name because he has tried really hard to remember ours; and he has more names to remember than we do.
We started off with the specific sitting positions that have the names of our mums, dads and family. We then did some stretches to warm 
up our muscles so that we could move easily. We held hands in a circle and while we were moving around still keeping the shape of a circle, Tanaka sensei would blow his whistle and saw either pancake or noodle. If he said “pancake” we would stay holding hands in a circle as a pancake is usually round. However if he blew his whistle and said “noodle”, we would let go hands and make a straight line, one behind the other just like a noodle before it gets cooked. Then we learnt how to walk on our bottoms and we played “tag” in this way. It was tricky 
because we needed both of our hands as we slid along the floor on our bottoms and how were we going to tag someone? We did in the end but it was much more difficult than we could imagine. Our circular cushions come in handy all of the time. We used them as stepping stones and walked on them, hopped on them and jumped on them. Then we played another game where we walked on them and when we heard the whistle blow, we had to pretend to be an animal. The 
selection of animals we had today was a rabbit, bear, frog and crocodile. We had to think of a movement or a pose that these animals would do, in order to make us look like them. For the crocodile we made our arms straight like the mouth of the crocodile and clapped them together; for the rabbit, we put our hands on top of our heads like rabbit ears and hopped around; for the bear we moved slowly and deliberately, growling and for the frog, we jumped and said “ribbet”.
We did some other exercises which included balancing on our bottoms; making our tummies like a table and walking in this position. We look forward to our gymnastics class next Monday and will keep fit and healthy till then.
When we came to school we at last started to work seriously on our weaving. In fact Vincent worked on the frame for a long time and 
when he first saw it, he said: “It’s like soccer!” The net design is the same as a soccer net, but the soccer net is soft and the thing that we used was hard. Vincent, Koh and Alexis spent some time weaving thread in and out and we will all have a turn to do it. The last thread that Alexis used was sparkly; so we will be using different textures until we have covered it all. It could be another work of art!
We played with lovely turquoise play dough at one table and cut out 
some shapes at another table. We are continuing our pegging game however this morning we had something different to peg on the string. Today we had foam stars in many colours and pegged them with relative ease. This activity is good for our fine motor co-ordination as it strengthens our fingers and helps us eventually when we hold a pencil or marker. We played the memory game with Liezel and while we know how to play it, we need one of our teachers with us to guide us.
Hisami read a ‘Daruma’ book and then she sang a song and we had to pull a funny face at the end. We tried not to laugh and everyone’s funny face, but we couldn’t keep a straight face. Thanks for a fun day everyone!
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.