Our dragon in the making

We welcomed Shoko back to school today and we noticed how much she has grown. She spent time playing with her friends, being in charge of the kitchen and speaking to them with beautiful English. We were happy to see her smiling face. In the first photo here, she, Tokutaro and Gento and doing "kampai" with their cups. This was initiated by Gento! The temperature was a lot warmer today and we had a great time playing outside. Yesterday it was a real struggle to keep warm but today we didn’t even think about the temperature; we were just able to enjoy everything fully. Beckett helped Shelley put water in a large bottle and water the flowers in our special garden in the park; Tokutaro and Sophie went down the roller slide together; Shoko and Gento went on the small yellow slide and then the bouncy seesaw; Noa and Oliver played a chasing game with Kana; Jamie and Eva played in the sandbox and that accounts for all of us who were at school today.

We enjoyed doing activities together as well and singing a few songs and welcoming everyone to school with our “Hello” song. Downstairs, we had already sung our “Hello” song when our friends walked in the door so we sang it again for everyone. We also counted that there were nine children at school today. Five of them were boys and four of them were girls. Our teachers asked us which number is the larger number and Jamie told us that five was bigger than four. We learnt from this that there were more boys than girls at school today. We had snack together and also added some red scales to the dragon head that we painted yesterday. We used a small cardboard box for the dragon’s head and used thin red paint to paint it. It is now looking more and more like an animal. We will add other features and then it will definitely look like a dragon……roarrrrrrrrr!

Upstairs we decorated stars for Oliver’s birthday gift and our teachers wrote messages at the back of the stars. Some of our friends were not at school today so they will make theirs as soon as they arrive at school on Monday so that they can be included in the gift. Some of our friends downstairs completed theirs yesterday and Shoko, Eva and Sophie did theirs when they arrived at school this morning. We played with our orange play dough and made shapes with cookie cutters and we had a lovely morning circle with singing and actions, just before the bigger children arrived. We sang “Everybody clapping” etc and included standing up, swaying like a tree, reaching for the stars and sitting down, in our repertoire. We learnt a new song today all about dragons. We counted our fingers on one hand and used the five fingers for the song. It is called “Five Green Dragons”. Shelley decided to use a tune that we already know when she sang the song today. It can also be sung to the tune of “Five Green Bottles”. The words of the song are in the email that Shelley sent to our mums and dads so they can sing with us at home.

When we first sang the song, we used our hands and our fingers represented the five green dragons. Next time  we will learn how to be dragons and dramatise the actual song. We made really loud roaring sounds so we know how to be dragons! We also sang “Where is Thumbkin” and then counted the fingers on both of our hands. Darren read stories to us on the mat. One of our favourite ones was “Sleepytime Farm”. It is about the animals when they go to sleep on the farm and the peaceful sky above filled with stars, that covers them like a blanket.

We had a wonderful start to the new term and New Year 2012 this week and looking forward to welcoming back more of our friends next week as well as celebrating Sophie and Oliver’s birthdays. Have a wonderful weekend.

Love always

Shelley, Darren, Kanako and Goh