December 12th, 2017
Dear Parents,
We live in “Planet Earth”, said E. “In Japan”, said G, “Yes in Tokyo”, said M. We discussed how planet Earth takes one whole year to go around the sun. We also sang our months of the year song –
‘January February March,
April May June,
July August September,
October November December,
These are the 12 months of the year’
Yes, Earth takes a long time to go around the sun and it’s the same amount of time we take to turn a year older. With this fact in mind, the December birthday children – E, M, A, R and W held the globe (depicting earth) in hand and went around the sun (photo). They started their birthday walk from December and when they came back to December again, it meant they turned 1. As they walked, we sang “the earth goes around the sun (3) and the children turn 1,,2,,3”. They walked around the sun 3 times because they turn 3 in December. Then we all wished them for their Birthday. Many mums and dads came for the birthday party and we all introduced ourselves by singing the ‘Hello’ song. We also sang ‘If you are happy and you know it’ and did many actions – clap our hands, jump up high, whisper Happy Birthday and then finally shouted Happy Birthday. Then we made our friends look like birthday children and gifted them a birthday crown. After that we gifted them a birthday card that we had decorated together with our teachers.
What’s a birthday party without some games and activities, right? We split our group in two and while one group did Limbo dancing, the other group made pancakes. And then we swapped. We haven’t done Limbo before, in which traditionally there is a stick and two people need to hold the two ends of the stick. We didn’t have the stick, so we used a long scarf. Then we had to limbo under the scarf, without falling or touching it. To do that, we bent our knees, leaned backwards in a way that our chest was facing up and inched our way towards the stick. Margrete, put some cool limbo music on and off we went shimmying under the limbo scarf (stick). Later, we adapted it the way we wanted it and while some of us decided to crawl under, few of us jumped over it. It was fun nevertheless.
The other group made pancakes, by adding eggs and milk to the pancake flour. Then we cooked it in the slow cooker and decorated it with whipped cream and sprinkles in rainbow color. A, who is gluten intolerant decorated her special cookies with cream and sprinkles and the rest of us made a pancake each. It was a pancake cake and our teachers placed candles on it for the birthday children to blow. Shweta, Ryan’s mum also got some yummy pies for all of us to eat. We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to our friends once again and thanked the mums and dad for coming to the party and playing and cooking with us.
John, the Music Man came to do Music and Movement with us today and we sang and danced like there is no tomorrow. It was very fun to sing a few of our favorite action songs with him including – 5 little ducks, the wheels on the bus, the car song (which he just made up in our class) and the calm down sleeping song. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts John, for amazing music sessions week after week.
It was quiet late to go to the park after our Music and Movement, and so we stayed back to listen to a story by Eric Carle in Japanese called ‘papa, otsuki sama totte’ which is same as ‘Papa, please get the moon for me’. It’s the story about a little girl called Monica wants the moon to play with, so her Papa sets out to get it for her. It isn’t easy to climb all the way to the moon, but he finally succeeds–only to find that the moon is too big to carry home! It was a lovely book to read and we saw different stages of the moon in the book. Some of us thought about our daddies as we read it and it was endearing to see Monica’s daddy go above and beyond to fulfil her wish. Oh, how we love our mums and dads and how they love us!
Love,
Little dancers in Petals Class