Centrepieces for Sunday

We had so much to do in our classes today it was quite good that we didn’t go to the park otherwise we may not have had time to complete everything. The reason why we didn’t go outside is that the snow has turned to ice and the entire park is now covered in ice. We would have slipped on it and become wet so we stayed indoors and busied ourselves with all of our play and learning today. Yossi came back to school and it was good to see him again. He remembered all of his morning tasks and went to the sign in table to write his name and sign in the time in the appropriate column. He really loves the pirate hat in the dress up corner and spent the whole morning wearing it and doing his table activities with it on. He and Noa painted their “hagoita” with sparkly paint. We started creating our centerpieces which will be used on Sunday at the Wine Tasting Fundraiser for Koamikura. Jenny worked a lot on the first one with Darren. She noticed that when you open up plastic CD holders and stand them, they make a “v” shape. We glued five of them together in a large pyramid shape. They look really amazing and she also added a CD on top of the CD containers. We will add to the display tomorrow using junk art and other materials.

Downstairs our friends too made centerpieces using junk art materials. They used CD’s, straw, toilet rolls, pipe cleaners, coloured paddle pop sticks and coloured matchsticks, orange ping pong balls, empty box of tissue paper and yoghurt cartons. We taped the materials together and then our teachers took a candle and placed it in the middle of each one. Of course we cannot light the candles as the materials surrounding them are flammable which means that they can catch alight and make a fire.

In the library we read “Elmer’s manners book” which was all about manners when meeting people and how to ask for things which most of us know about; however it is always good to be reminded about these kinds of things because people forget sometimes. During our circle time upstairs, we played the “freeze” game. Since it is the Year of the Snake, we cut out paper that looks like snake skin and pasted pieces onto our “hagoita”. We first drew the shape that we wanted to cut out on the white side of the paper, cut it out and then we flipped it over. We all tried to draw a snake shape.

During Yoga, we did the snake – cobra position. We invented our own new positions that represent transport e.g. Yossi – walk; Beckett – car; Noa – taxi; Miya – horse; FJ – swim; Nico – ski; Jamie – run; Jenny – snowboard.

Downstairs we spoke about clothing and the different items that we wear and what part of our body we wear them on. Then when Shelley put on a hat which goes on your head, we all wanted to put a hat on too. We read the story called “The Hat” which was about a hedgehog that gets a sock stuck to his prickles and it looks like he is wearing a hat.

We sang so many songs today from our new selection of songs and once again our favourite was “Peanut butter jelly”. We added a twist to the song today which helped us learn the names of different kinds of foods. We sang “Peanut butter broccoli”; “Peanut butter eggplant” etc. We also played a game which helps us understand how to categorize things. The game is called “Concentration elimination” and we chose a few different subjects today. The first one was animals and we went around the circle and each of us had to think of a different animal. The next subject was colours and once again we went around the circle and had to think of a different colour from the one that our teachers or friends had already named. The last category was numbers and we ended up counting sequentially, which was fine. We played with play dough, made our centerpieces, decorated hearts for Ayaka and did cutting. Vincent absolutely loves cutting and this is what he did most of the time at the activity tables.

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