Obstacle course

It was a cosy indoors day at school as the weather once again showed its inconsistency. It was much cooler too and we were happy to stay warm and dry downstairs and upstairs. Downstairs, we were happy to see one of our new teachers when we arrived this morning. We forgot to tell you about Rachel yesterday. She won a scholarship from her university to come to Japan and work at Ohana. We think that it is “so cool” that she chose our school. This is what it says on her webpage: I'm a 21-year-old junior at UNC Chapel Hill. I'm majoring in psychology and history and hope to someday work with kids. Right now, I work for the History Department as the technological liaison. We hope that she has a great time with us as we have fun with her. During our free play time, we played on the mat and also did activities at the tables. We have mentioned this before; our teachers can have quality one to one time with us when we do some table activities like this. Today we sat with them and tried to draw ourselves. We used a black marker on a small piece of white paper. Some of us could only make a face and some of us made a whole person; with a head, neck, body and arms and legs. Some of us even wrote our own names on them. Our teachers are going to use these pictures for something, which they didn’t tell us about. We did some cutting, drawing and pasting at one table and then later in the morning, we played with play dough as well.

We sat in a circle together and sang some action songs. We touched our chin and said “good morning” to our friends; we touched our knees and said “ohio gozaimasu”; we touched our tummies and said “bonjour”; we swayed while sitting and said “ shalom”; we stamped our feet and said “guten tag”; we touched our toes and said “haloooooo”. We all laughed when said the last one. Our teachers were not sure why, but we thought that it was funny. Then we went around in the circle and learnt the beginning sounds of our names. We sang: Sh, sh, sh for Shoko x 3, Her name is Shoko. We sang this for everyone even our teachers and afterwards Shelley asked us why she said “her” and “his”. We thought a little bit and then Miya said it was because “her is a her!” Yes, said Shelley, her is because she is a ………………..”girl”; and his is for boys.

We went upstairs during the morning and did an obstacle course. We had to go through a number of different activities e.g. walk one foot in front of the other along a line made from tape; hop from one short piece of tape to the next; jump along the electric floor piano; choose and sit on a T stool; throw three blue balls into a bucket and the last one was dress up in any costume of our choice.

Earlier in the day some of our bigger friends went upstairs and used the white boards to practice drawing straight lines, curved lines and circles. They also drew in between the lines very carefully. It was a fun day of learning and playing and learning through play.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Kana and Rachel