Happy early birthday Christine

Today we welcomed back Ava and we celebrated Christine’s birthday. We were all together for the celebration and had fun being with all of our friends and teachers at Ohana. Our Tuesday’s may not be like this for much longer as we are welcoming more children from next term so we are going to maximise this time till the end of this term.

Yesterday our friends downstairs made brownies for the party so we feasted on them. In fact when we walked into the classroom for the party, we could still smell the smell of baking from yesterday. Before we started the party, Darren read us the entire story called “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”. It was a fun story however most of us did not like the troll. In fact Jennifer went to sit next to Ayaka as she felt a little afraid. Lucky he was just in the book!

 Then we all hid and waited for Christine to come and sit on the chair. When she came into the room we all shouted “surprise”. She seemed really surprised! We all stood around her and sang “When you’re happy and you know it”. Some of us chose an action that we think people like to do when they are happy. We chose clap your hands, jump, stamp your feet, shout happy birthday and then whisper happy birthday. When we shout sometimes it is a little too loud and some of our friends don’t really like it. Then we sang “How old are you now”. Christine told us that she was four (she showed us four fingers on one hand) and one (she showed us one finger on the other hand). Some of us worked out that four plus one is five and then FJ said that she was also five! We then sang “Christine is four and one years old today”. Ava found a beautiful pink crown for her to wear and Miya helped put it on her head. We counted five in many languages viz. English, French, Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, German and Spanish. Nico presented her with her gift of hearts from all of us. She said that it was the best party that she had had for many years. We sat together at the table, lit five candles and sang “Happy Birthday to you” and then “Otanjiyobi omedetou”. We feasted on rich brownie cupcakes and also ate our healthy snacks.

All of us went outside together and spent time in the park. Many of our small friends are being adventurous on the climbing frame and our teachers have to watch them so that they stay safe all of the time. We learnt today that when we find garbage in the park, we must pick it up and throw it away even if it is not ours; of course we will not pick up cigarettes or dangerous things however empty plastic bags we can pick up. Shelley found an empty Monster Munch bag and a full unopened one which she brought back to school and put in the garbage.

 Upstairs, early in the morning we played with a felt board and shapes. There were three different scenes; one was the three little bears; one was a farm with animals and the third one was a pirate and his ship. We enjoyed mixing them all and creating our own story from them. Nico completed his grasslands picture from yesterday. He coloured in his giraffe with white and then added brown spots. He also drew a large elephant.

Downstairs, we did some more leaf rubbing as Lily and Ava had not yet had a turn to do it. They enjoyed hiding the leaves underneath their pieces of paper and we amazed at the magic of leaf rubbing; suddenly they saw the shape of the leaves on their paper. We drew with markers as well and spent time playing with the coloured plasticine. Tokutaro loves the brief case with the combination lock. Yesterday he tried to get inside it and close the lid but he realised that this was not possible. Today a few of us played with the numbers on the combination lock and then we couldn’t open it. The numbers that we need to remember are eight, one , zero; nd we need to remember the code for both sides. The challenge after that is to push the brass locks open. Thanks for a great day everyone.

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