Recording our voices
Today we were given a choice of upstairs and doing a project together or going downstairs to play and what do you think we did? We chose to go downstairs. We had this discussion because earlier this morning it had been raining and the park was too wet for us to go and play in it. We loved our time downstairs and discovered something special that we found it hard to share. There is a tape recorder with a microphone. When you push the button on the microphone, you can hear your voice inside the machine; then Shelley pushed one of the buttons and we spoke; she pushed the rewind button and then………………we heard our voices coming through the machine. This was such a surprise. Ren, Finn and James had a turn to talk into the microphone and have their voices recorded.
We did cooking as well, in the kitchen and we also spent time decorating Finn’s circle wishes for his birthday. Luckily he was so busy playing with the tape recorder, he didn’t even notice us.
In the morning we started our day standing in a circle, holding hands and singing “The Hokey Pokey”. We sang the songs and did actions with our arms, legs, heads, tummies, bottoms and our whole self. Then we sang “My Body makes Music” in English and “Mi Cuepo” in Spanish. James smiled as he understands Spanish and remembered the song. We went through our days of the week and Shelley sometimes makes it really obvious when she sings the song for us to guess what day it is today. She sings really quietly and then she sings really loudly. Her voice was so soft for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and then she sounded like a foghorn shouting out Thursday in a really deep, loud voice. We laughed as we knew what today was then. We sang our “Hello” song and Shelley sang her part in two different ways. The one way was singing with her mouth and voice into her shirt and the other way was sitting proudly and singing her name out aloud. We told her that it was better the second time as we could hear her clearly. She reminded us about the meaning of the word “echo”. We remembered that we had learnt an echo song and sang it; “I am special” and then we remembered the story with the echo called “We’re going on a bear hunt”. We sang a song that we have heard on our CD called “Copy Cat”.
In this song Shelley sings and does something and when she says “Now you”; it is then our turn to do the same thing e.g. she tapped her knees three time so we tapped our knees three times; she blew four times so we blew four times; she popped her lips five times so we popped our lips five times etc. It was fun and we waited in anticipation each time she did something; and then we had to try to remember it.
At the activity table we did cotton bud painting. Shelley told us that there are many things that we know that have different names in different parts of the world e.g. tissue and Kleenex; pillows and cushions. She said the cotton buds are sometimes called ear buds, cotton tips or Q-tips. We noticed that there were two soft parts on each cotton bud; one on each end. When we painted with them, we dipped one end in one colour and the other end in another colour. Then we could take another cotton bud and use it for two more colours. We made interesting paintings which will also go inside our portfolios.
Ren, Quentin and James played the Bob the Builder memory game and learnt how to take turns and wait. They had to remember where all the cards were on the table which can be quite difficult.
Our story today was called “The little mouse, the red, ripe strawberry and the big, hungry bear”. It was about a tiny mouse that climbed a ladder to pick a strawberry. He was told that there was a big, hungry bear coming and that you cannot hide a strawberry from a big, hungry bear, especially one that loves strawberries. The only way out was to eat the strawberry which the mouse did. He cut it in half and gave the person who was reading the story one half and he ate the other half. Yummmmmm!
Love Shelley and Darren