Giving thanks

It feels like we have not seen our friends and teachers for such a long time and when we all saw one another today, we were so happy. We had a fun time doing an activity all together on the second floor and we also listened to Oliver doing his Show and Tell. Oliver brought with him a brochure and some photos of the time when he went to “Zoorasia”. It is a place where there are lots of live animals and they live in more natural settings which makes those of us who think that “animals should not be in cages”, feel a little better. He showed us a map of “Zoorasia” and there was a photo of him with a monkey, a dinosaur and another animal that we could not recognize. We gave him a big clap after his presentation. The activity we did today was in honour of Thanksgiving which our American friends celebrate tonight. We are going to be having our Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow and of course we need to say “thanks” and show gratitude for everything that we have in our lives. Today we made cards and decorated it with sparkly and foam shapes and we will give them to our families tomorrow. Shelley wanted to talk a bit about what we can thank people for so she used the ice creams that we have in our classroom. She said that she was an ice cream store owner, and we had to come and buy ice cream. We each had a turn; gave her “money” and then bought our flavours. There were raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, cream, chocolate, orange and banana. We all remembered to say 'thank you' when we received our ice creams and Shelley said “thank you” when we paid her for them. She then asked us what we can thank our mums or dads or teachers for. We were not sure and so we went to the tables and did the activity. Those of us who can write our names will write them in the cards tomorrow.

Downstairs we sang some new songs. We really love singing and music and we know all the actions and some of the words to the songs that we have been singing since the beginning of the year. The photo of Eva shows her blowing a kiss, which comes at the end of our “Open them, shut them” song. We learnt how to use our hands in order to show someone that we love them. We pointed to ourselves and said ‘I’; then we held our hands together underneath our hearts and said ‘love’ and then we pointed our hands to our friends and teachers and said ‘you’. We then sang “Skinnamarinky Dinky Dink” and used our hands once again to say “I love you”. Then Kana taught us “five little ducks”. We counted the fingers on our one hand and realized that we have five fingers. We then sang the song together. We read some books at library time and read a book that has the letters of the alphabet with pictures in it.

Upstairs we read “The Tremendous Tree Book”. We made leaf drawings on green paper and will use these tomorrow as backgrounds for doing an activity with stamps.

Wishing you a lovely afternoon and we want to send a special Happy Thanksgiving wish to all of our American families and friends. Enjoy the feast!

Love Shelley, Darren and Kanako