The pirate costume

It’s a terrific Thursday! The Buds class is here to explore more about the pirates and islands where we could find the treasure. Yes, you heard that right! We’re going on a fantastic expedition today. But of course, we have to do our morning jobs first. Ritsuka has arrived at school early in the morning and she greeted her teachers with a nice grin. After finishing her morning jobs, she went to the activity table and found some trays. The trays were prepared for our fine motor and sensory activity. We needed to put the pine cones, chickpeas and some white stones. We also had a tray of flowers and we actually used magnifying glasses to have a closer look. We examined the petals vigorously. Charles came later and he found out that there were some doll house toys and construction blocks on the play area. He tried to make his own house and patiently waited for someone to help him out. He seemed to be enjoying his time at Ohana. He is always very curious and tries to discover the things that he can do in our classroom. Taiga, Rei and Yurika got inside our room with wonderful smiles and they all got so excited when they saw the island art on the table.  Lucy requested if she can also join in and we welcomed her to our activity. Sayaka is here today! Thank you so much for helping us. It was a pleasure to see you. She is one of the Buds teachers but she is currently on vacation. She just came here today because she wanted to see and teach us. Later on, our friends kept coming and coming. We have a big number today, eleven children came and it was very pleasant to see our class having so much energy and happiness. Rupert, Anneke and Alexandre were also very curious with our sensory trays and they started scooping and picking the chickpeas and pine cones.             For our special activity, we continued doing our island art by pouring some sand on the play dough.  On Monday, we molded the play dough to make a small ball and then press it down to make it flat. We then put the play dough on our blue cardboard box and inserted sticks and poms poms (trees). And today, we sprinkled some sand on it. Our island art turned out to be so wonderful and we will be using this for another adventure tomorrow.

In our circle time, we talked about what the pirates wear. We learned about the pirate hat and the eyepatch. Each of us got a chance of wearing them again. Rei-chan was so interested that she volunteered to wear them for the rest of our circle time. Emma the bunny and Mary the moose visited us again and showed us how they found the treasure chest with beautiful necklaces. They put them all on and started sailing back to their home. But unfortunately, Emma fell off the ship and Mary had to rescue her as soon as she can. Good thing she saved her and they both went home safe and sound.

We also did our music lesson today. We really couldn’t go out because of the tricky weather but we also enjoyed being inside. We learned how to play with the castanets (Charles really enjoyed playing with it), drums which we had to take turns, and maracas (we passed it around so that everyone had an opportunity to shake it rhythmically).

Another art work that we did today was making the pirate hat and eyepatch. We pasted some ornaments and skulls with crossbones on our pirate hats and we put pipe cleaners on our eye patch so that we can wear them and pretend to be like pirates. Ivory was so engrossed with this activity and she was very focused for quite a long time. Kaia quietly did her art work but when her mom came to pick her up, she proudly showed it to her.

Thank you so much Ohana and hope to see you all again tomorrow! Have a great day!

Lots of love,

John, Goh, Sayaka and Toshiki