We can face the challenge
Today we almost completed our weaving and for sure, will do the last actual weaving section on it. Then we will add things to it to create our work of art. We were so busy doing a cutting exercise, during the morning that we didn’t have time to do any weaving. Shelley told us that some of her students who come for her after school classes, wanted to do some weaving too, when they had a short break. We can understand how eager they were to work on it as we have 
loved watching the metal rack transform into this beautiful woven art work.
At the one activity table, Hisami sat with some of us and guided us as we placed some natural objects onto contact. We enjoyed turning the 
contact over and pasting it directly onto a page in our workbooks. We also used up the paints for our printing. Most of our friends, who usually do not attend school on a Thursday, completed their printing today. The shape that we most loved using for this activity was the one that made circles on our page. You can see from the photos, that we made many circles. We will do another art project next week using paints in autumn colours and use these as backgrounds for something interesting.
We did a quite a challenging activity with Shelley this morning. It involved drawing and/or colouring, cutting, designing and pasting. Now you can see why we said it was challenging. We each had a sheet of paper with a variety of shapes on it. There was one circle, one large 
rectangle, a triangle and many small rectangles. Our first instruction was to decorate the paper in whatever way we wanted to, using coloured pencils and wax crayons. We were inspired by some of our friends and what they were doing. You can see from our photos that we tried to colour the shapes in without our teachers telling us. The next step was to cut all of the shapes out, on the black lines. This was 
one of the most challenging parts because we had to pay attention to the lines and cut carefully along them. If we needed help, our teachers helped and guided us and reminded us to cut slowly. When we are working on activities such as these, we do not need to rush. Our teachers encourage us to do our best and take our time. In Japanese, to do your best is “Isho’o kenmay”. Then we arranged the shapes on a page in our workbooks/portfolios and pasted them in. Some of us made them into the shape of a person. Lilian decided that hers could be a rocket. She used the large rectangle 
and triangle for the rocket and then she said: “Oh, I can use the circle for the moon” and so she pasted the moon on her page too. Some of us didn’t use all of the shapes we had made so we put them inside our backpacks. Some of us chose to paste all of the shapes on the page.
Hisami played a game with us and spoke to us about acorns which are called “donguri” in Japanese. We sang the chestnut tree song in English and Japanese and next week we will learn how to make “donguri” using origami paper.
When we were going to get ready for snack time, she drew the initial letters of our names and 
each time we had to guess which one was ours. We like to play these games with letters and most of our learning is in a fun way with games, which is the best way for us when we are at preschool. We hope that when we go to big school one day, learning will still be presented to us in a fun, creative way. On our way to the park, we sang our good morning song.
During free play time, we played a memory game at the small table. We had to pick up two plastic covers and see what was underneath them. If they matched we kept them and if they were different, we put them back and the next person had a turn. We tried to remember some of the pictures that we had seen underneath the plastic covers so that when it was our turn, we could find the correct match.
This weekend is the last weekend in September for this year. We hope that all of our friends and their family’s enjoy lovely weather and we look forward to the beginning of a new week on Monday.
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.