Our visit to the Community Centre

Today we were busy travelling once again, and upstairs we went to the United States of America and downstairs, we went to the Philippines. We looked at the map of the USA and counted 51 states. Hawaii is not on the huge land mass of the USA however it is also a state. We learnt that Blue comes from Texas and Clodia was born in New York. We played a fun United Stated of America Bingo game and had to listen carefully to see if we had a picture of something famous in America. We looked at pictures of many famous things e. g. The Statue of Liberty, The Grand Canyon, Skyscrapers (which are really tall buildings that look like they are scraping the sky), Buffalo, Rock and Roll (which is a kind of music that a man with black hair, called Elvis, made famous), Mount Rushmore (which has huge sculpted faces of some old Presidents of the USA), a Teepee (which is a tent that some Native Americans, lived in and maybe still live in today), The Kentucky Derby (which is a famous horse race),  The White Hourse (where the President of the United States of America lives and works) and Tornado Alley (where lots of whirly strong winds come and destroy homes etc). If we were a winner, we received a gift of either a pencil, an eraser, or a keyring with a Texas hat on it. These were real American souvenirs. Thanks Frances and Micaelan.

 There were more famous landmarks that we learnt about like Old Faithful (which is a fountain of water called a geyser that shoots water into the air regularly), The Alamo (where people fought with one another a long time ago), American Football (which is a kind of football where you use your body strongly to stop the other team from getting the ball) and last but not least The Redwood Forest (which is a forest full of amazing Redwood trees which grow so tall).

Both Frances and Micaelan read us books. Frances read one by Obama titled “Of thee I sing” which was all about American people who are famous and their achievements. We learnt about a man called “Neil Armstrong” who was the first man to walk on the moon. Micaelan’s book was called “Armadillo Rodeo” and it was about rodeos in Texas where there are cowboys and horses. We practiced line dancing with steps and kicks and stomp kicks. It was such fun.

 We tried some Southern American food which was really delicious. We ate cheese tortillas and barbecued sausage. Yummmmm! We used a large selection of stickers to decorate our American flag spinning tops. Frances and Micaelan brought along spinning tops with circles and stars made from paper, to attach to the top. We decorated them with lots of stickers that had pictures of many of the famous American landmarks that we spoke about earlier, as well as basket balls, football players and of course lots of stars. When we finished decorating our spinning tops we went to the carpet area where we tried to see if our tops would spin around.

We want to say a huge thank you to Micaelan and Frances for preparing so many amazing activities and interesting things for us to see, do and eat.

 Downstairs, we travelled to the Philippines with Carmen, Zachary’s mum. She showed us so many things about the Philippines on her ipad. We learnt about the Philippines flag being the only flag that changes during times of war. We mentioned this when Baby came to do the Philippines upstairs, earlier in the week. The blue colour on the flag is usually on the top however in times of war, the red is on the top. We saw a picture of the Chocolate Hills, of people dressed up, of the famous Jeepneys, which are the popular form of transport and we learnt that people speak many, many different languages. The Jeepney’s are really colourful and long ago they were used as army vehicles. Now they are similar to taxis as you have to pay to ride them and they are bright and cheerful.

 Carmen brought some activities for us to do. The one was a crab that we could colour in using a variety of drawing equipment. We used markers, sparkly pens, crayons and coloured pencils. We each took two googly eyes and stuck them on to the crabs googly eyes. The second activity was decorating yellow, red and blue stars. There are stars on the Philippines flag and there is also a festival with lots of beautiful star decorations. We had two tassles hanging from our stars and we took a selection of sparkly stars, hearts and butterflies and pasted them onto the stars. We could not take them home as the glue was still wet.

  Carmen read us a Philippine folktale called “Dikya the Jellyfish”. It told the story of why the jellyfish does not have bones. We know that we have bones because we learnt how to look after them in our KIDFIT class. We wonder how the jellyfish can walk if he doesn’t have bones. Oh, he swims, so he doesn’t walk. Then he won’t have  problem.

Carmen made a delicious Philippine treat called “Biko”. It is made from rice, sugar and coconut milk and some of us wanted to eat more and more and more. Of course, some of us just smelled it and then said “No, thank you”. It was so yummy. We want to say a huge thank you to Carmen for preparing so many fun things for us to do today. We know so many things about the Philippines and hope one day we can go and visit there. We especially liked the picture of the beautiful beach that she showed us.

The final thing that we want to share with you from our day at school, today, is that 11 of us in the downstairs class went to visit the Community Centre across the road. Today there were eight people having lunch and they all sat in front of their obento boxes, while we sang and entertained them. It was really special for all of us and for them. We sang three songs in Japanese and then three songs in English. We gave them each a flower that we had made together with our teachers earlier in the week. The flowers were made out of tissue paper.

We were really happy to bring smiles to their faces today and we had great fun too. We are looking forward to the next time that we go and visit them. We will try to make this a monthly event.

 Love always

Shelley, Darren, Hisami, Ayaka, Liezel, Nanako, Goh, Christine, Maryna, Sharee