Gymnastics like Osumo

Gymnastics was great today especially since we were not able to go outside; it was raining this morning………..and it was so humid too. We thought that Fall/Autumn had arrived on the weekend but it looks like summer is still here. We did many warm up exercises which we already know e. g. walking on all fours like a bear, jumping like a bunny, sliding on our tummy like a crocodile and flying like a bird.

We used the really big green soft mat for some of our exercises so that our bodies were protected. We did somersaults on the mat and then we jumped with two feet together all the way to wear the chairs were positioned. We jumped around them all the way back to our places. The first time we did a somersault, we bent our legs but the second time, we kept our legs straight and put our bottoms pointing to the sky. We did this in two groups because we had two chairs. Each time we put our hands on top of our heads as if they were rabbit ears and jumped around one of the chairs. When Miyashita sensei blows the whistle it is really loud and we know exactly what it means; usually it means stop!

We played a game with the mat today and pretended that it was like a big Osumo. In Sumo, we all know that one person has to push the other one so that they fall over. Miyashita sensei held the green mat in front of him and we were divided into two teams. Our goal was to push the green mat with Miyashita sensei behind and try to push him over. The first team pushed so hard that he fell over. The second team had to push even harder and they too managed to push the mat and then Miyashita sensei fell over. We were all winners! The second game was with all of us pushing at the same time. He shouted “hakkeyo” which is what the “referee” says when real Osumo are in the ring.

hakkeyoi (はっけよい) -The phrase shouted by a sumo referee during a bout, specifically when the action has stalled and the wrestlers have reached a stand-off. It means, "Put some spirit into it!"

We put plenty of spirit into our pushing!

During the morning we spent some time threading beads onto a plastic strand. These are going to be part of our medals for Sports Day. We will attach a medal to the end of it and will receive it at the end of Sports Day. Some of us made a few strands and we sat with our teachers and spoke about the shape of the beads, the colours and whether the holes were large enough because some of them couldn’t fit onto the thread. We also found quite a few beads that were broken.

  We continued doing activities after gymnastics and made squares out of circles and then continued threading beads. Afterwards we did a role play exercise to understand the different feelings we may have when we do things that can upset or make others feel happy and when others do things that can upset or make us feel happy. Our teachers documented the conversation that we had. We tried to focus on kindness and what people can do to show kindness. We thought of some examples like sharing, hugging, holding a friends hand, saying “I love you”, helping Yurika’s grandma carry her bags into the taxi, playing with your sister or brother and a whole lot more. Shelley used finger puppets and they role played some acts of kindness and some acts that we thought were not so kind. We told her what we thought about the role play and the feelings that the characters “Yuki and Kaneko” must have had. We have similar feelings when things happen to us e. g. we feel sad when our friends won’t share however when they say “you can use it when I am finished”, we feel better; and then we need to be patient which is not always so easy for us. Feelings are also a big part of our learning this month and we, of course will be preparing for our Halloween party, on the last day of October.

We will be focusing on “kindness” as a value for the month of October and our teachers have asked us to do kind things when we are not at school too, and write about them. They sent out a calendar to all of our parents earlier today, explaining what we will be doing this month. Thanks for a great start to the week and our first day at school in October.

See you tomorrow. We hope that the typhoon that is coming will not disrupt us coming to school etc. later in the week.

All the children in Petals Class.