March 16, 2026
Happy Monday Buds families!
Just a few friendly reminders for this week as it will be busy but full of fun!
***MOMs day will be held this Wednesday! Your child is welcome to attend the day of the event during the morning, even though it may not be your child’s regularly scheduled attendance day.
-3/17th- The Buds class will be going to Star Fruits produce shop together!
-3/18th MOMs day and afterwards, the Buds will be going to Miwa Coffee down the street to visit!
-3/19th- All blankets will be going home this Thursday ahead of our evacuation drill this Friday. REMINDER! EARLY PICK UP AT STEP PARK 11:30AM FRIDAY
Today on our front table, our little Buds created a sensory artwork painting by using the colors and creating a likeness of the South African flag! In honor of Shelley sharing her international months with our Buds class, we celebrated by stamping animals and scraping across the plastic sheet to make a truly unique one of a kind artwork! K was amazed to see the paint squish across the paper when she tapped and slid her toy giraffe and tiger!
At the back table, there were Animals grazing and roaming, ready for us to combine play doh and their fascinating features! We stamped their hooves and paws into the clay to make special foot prints! M loved stamping the elephant’s feet into the clay and made many foot prints! T also liked rolling little balls of food for them to eat. MUNCH MUNCH!
In the free play area, there were even more animals happily stampeding across the floor! We love animals in Buds Class and we also love to imitate them by using our bodies to act out their features. Shoma Sensei loves when we all exercise like animals while we move about the room!
Speaking of Shoma, after we cleaned up and ate our snack, he arrived! We said hello and he invited us all to stretch our arms and legs in preparation for a color cone race! He invited us all to collect certain color cones. We had fun counting and sorting through all the colors to find the ones that Shoma assigned to us! The teachers were impressed by how quickly we all moved! We are getting faster on our feet and maneuvering around!
Pretty soon, it was time to say bye-bye to Shoma and welcome Shelley to our class to teach us about her home country, South Africa! Shelley showed us an amazing movie about the “big 5” popular animals of South Africa. They are the lion, rhino, elephant, leopard and the buffalo! Shelley invited us to give our best roar! ROAR! And to stomp our feet and wave our arms like an elephant’s trunk. We learned that the buffalos walk closely together to stay safe and that the leopards can run very quickly! ZOOM!
After we settled down, Shelley invited us to pin a purple trunk on the elephant! It was so fun to watch Shelley show us how to play. We had to walk over to a giant elephant face, and with our eyes closed, do our best to stick the trunk where it belongs. What a great way to exercise hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness!
After we waved goodbye to our animal friends and thanked Shelley, we got ready to go out and play in the green space! We love being outside and we also loved to pretend to be animals there too!
Thanks so much for a great Monday everyone!
Love,
Buds