Animal masks

We have been so lucky with the weather lately but are still missing some of our friends who are still ill. Get better soon all of our sick friends; Allie, Lily, Eva, Charlie and Beckett. We had a fun day playing outside, throwing the small white plastic baseball; we kicked and threw the pinkish red ball and we pulled the wagons, filled them up with sand, rocks and leaves and some of our friends sat in them and we pushed them. Tokutaro sat in Clodia’s wagon and she had to use all of her strength to push him.

During the morning we spent time doing activities at the table which we then took on to the floor. The one activity was a sorting one; we had red, blue, green, purple, orange and yellow containers and many different plastic toys in those same colours. We placed them all into their matching coloured container e.g. purple went into the purple container etc. We had fruit, transport, dinosaurs and insects. Then Tokutaro took his yellow bowl, yellow is his favourite colour and put it on top of the long red cushion. Clodia followed him and did the same with the orange bowl. They then took their bowls into the kitchen and started “cooking” with them. At the end of the day, when Shelley was cleaning up she had to search for them because Tokutaro and Clodia didn’t seem to remember where they were!

 During the morning we sang some of our favourite songs e.g. “ABC song”; “Twinkle twinkle little star”; “Hello”; “Wake up it’s a lovely day”; “Five little leaves” and “One little two little three little pumpkins”. In fact when we were outside playing on the slide, we found leaves and held them up and sang our “Five little leaves” song again. We let the stalks go and the leaves floated to the ground, which is exactly what we sing in the song.

We drew with coloured pencils, sparkly pens, wax crayons and markers on a large circle shape. Then we pasted some collage on to our pictures. We all know what a circle is now especially since we sing “Let’s all hold hands in a circle” almost every day.

Emily, Miya and Sophie completed their farm animal drawings on blue and green paper while Noa and Oliver completed their sweet potato paintings. They printed the sweet potatoes using purple paint and loved getting all messy with paint on their hands; some of us like getting our hands messy while others don’t.

We had a small circle time which resulted from block play. Some of us were playing with the small wooden blocks during free play time. In fact, FJ built a tall tower which she said was Skytree. When it came to packing the blocks back into the plastic box, if we just put them in without placing them carefully, they would not fit. We looked at the different shapes of all the blocks and compared them. Some were tall and some were short; there were triangles which had three sides (we counted them) and there was another shape called a semi-circle. It is a half a circle and when you put two semi-circles together, you get a whole circle shape again. In order for all of the blocks to fit into the plastic box, we had to place them carefully and then they all fitted in perfectly. We remember that downstairs it is the same with the small coloured blocks.

 When we returned from the park we did a review of all of the farm animals that we know. We read the book called “The Grasslands” and each of us had a turn to give clues to our friends as to what kind of animal we were e.g. I have black and white stripes and look a little like a horse. Straight away our friends guessed that we were a zebra. We selected our favourite animal in the “Grasslands” book and then we chose a sheet of acetate with a picture of an animal on it. Acetate is plastic and it is the same size as a regular piece of printing paper. On each sheet of acetate, there was an animal’s head. We selected one and held it up to our faces like a mask. We wonder if you can guess whose face is behind the dog picture. We could help you if we listed everyone’s name here and the picture that they chose but……………maybe we will keep it a secret!

We hope that you have a great afternoon and we will keep our fingers crossed that some of our friends will return to school tomorrow.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Ayaka, Nanako, Sabine, Goh, Liezl and Christine.