Difference is wonderful
Terrific Tuesday! That’s what we had today. It really was a wonderful day because we spoke about difference and what it means to us; and how we view others who are different. We had a long conversation which you can read below. The main thing that came out of the conversation was that we are all aware of difference and how important it is to value difference and see something special in it.
The motivation for talking about difference came from our story today. It was called “The Ugly Duckling” and while in the book it kept on saying that the duckling was ugly, Shelley said that it was different. Kai, brought up the issue of difference and most of us seemed to know what difference is. When the “ugly duckling” realized that it was a swan, it looked at it’s reflection in the water and saw what it really looked like……………...a beautiful swan.
Shelley: Where can we see our reflections?
Alona: In the water
Emilie: The mirror
Shelley: Do we all look the same?
Io: There’s Japanese and English
Taisei: Some have different hair
Emilie: Different clothes
Mia: Different eyes
Temma: Some are Chinese
Shelley: And are we all good at everything?
Children: No
Shelley: So if you see someone who cannot do something, what can you do?
Children: Help them
Temma: We can teach them
Natan: We can show them
William: We can play with them
Ai: Play with them
William: You can play with two people in the park
We are glad that our teachers teach us kindness, consideration and compassion. We all need to be surrounded by people who live by these values. At the activity tables, we made linings for the garbage bins made out of old newspapers, so that we can do away with using plastic bags in our classroom. We folded them just like we do when we are making origami shapes. Usually we fold origami with paper that is a square shape however we used newspaper, which is rectangular in shape. The rectangle shape was perfect for our garbage bin liners. We have folded many and will use them over the next few weeks and see how successful they are. It is always good to try new things and try to help do what is best for our world.
At the very big table, Sarah wrote all of our names on a piece of laminated paper. She used a permanent marker so that the names didn’t smudge. We will paste our names on our tree that is a part of our canvas. Kai suggested that we use transparent paper so that the words that we paste on the tree, do not hide the drawings and paintings that we made, or the food that we cut out. This was a great idea. We will paste all the names on when we have attached the tree to the canvas. We trust that someone will enjoy having the tree in their home, after the auction for OHANA GIVES BACK.
Liezel sat with us while we made the Polar Bear puzzle. We have mentioned this before, but it is a challenging puzzle because most of the pieces are white or shades of white. We went to Amishiro Koen today and saw our Petals friends. They were leaving the park as we were arriving. We would like to play with sand toys in the park, so will take some with us next time.
During our morning circle, we learned about syllables. All words are made up of syllables which basically means that all words are made up of sections or parts. Some words have two syllables, some have three and some can even have one. However the sounds in English are different from those in Japanese and this can affect the number of syllables in both languages e. g. In English when we clap Temma, we clap two syllables e. g. Temma; however if we are saying his name in Japanese we clap three syllables e. g. Te-m-ma. This was the same for Ai e. g. In English she would have one syllable and in Japanese, she has two syllables. We had fun clapping our own names and counting syllables. Most of us have two syllables, a few of our friends have one syllable, some have three and Momofuku has four syllables. Learning English can be so much fun.
OXOXOXOXOX Flowers Class children