Kindness is growing on our tree

We spent a busy day in Flowers Class today and even though it was cold, just like a real wintry day, we spent some time in the park. We went to Step Park. Shelley was surprised to hear that Step Park is open already, because she thought that it was only going to be ready in March. We are happy to have Step Park open especially when we have been working for a long time in our classroom, and don’t need to walk too far.

It was Momo’s SHOW AND TELL today and he brought along some wonderful photos for us to look at. The photos were taken at a place where he went fishing. In fact, the place where he went fishing was part of a restaurant. It’s a restaurant where you fish for the food that you are going to eat and once you have caught the fish, the chef at the restaurant will cook it for you. He put something on the end of the hook which is called “bait” and then put it into the water. He waited until a creature under the water, bit the bait. He told us that he caught a lobster and his dad caught a fish. He said that the restaurant cooked the fish but not the lobster as they didn’t want to eat the lobster. While they were fishing, he also told us that his sister Amelie was sleeping.

We were happy to hear about Momo’s SHOW AND TELL. He was proud to show us the photos and share his story with us. Thanks Momo.

When we arrived at school, we spent some time preparing for Hina Matsuri, which is a Japanese festival that we will be celebrating with some of our parents, on Friday. Our teachers know what our parents are preparing for us, so they decided to do something else that is also related to Hina Matsuri. We also like to have a record of all the festivals inside our workbook/portfolios and with the activity that we did with Hisami, we are guaranteed of having something to paste into our workbooks/portfolios. We started off by selecting two sheets of origami paper; one for Ohinasama and one for Odairisama. We made two folds on the origami pa-per and this represented their kimono. This activity took a long time as it involved looking at lots of detail and how to add the different accessories etc. to the art work. We had some samples of Ohinasama and Odairisama to look at and from these, we could choose which one we wanted to make. Many of us liked the one that we described here above however a few of us wanted to try another one. Since the activity takes a long time, we are going to continue working on making them until all of us have completed ours. Hina Matsuri is a beautiful festival of dolls and there are many stores that display seven steps

filled with the dolls. Some people even have them inside their homes. We have a whole set for our school and will display them next year in the office. The “hina ningyo” are in storage at the moment and Shelley will bring them to Ohana so that we can keep them here.

At one table, Shelley sat with the last group of friends as they looked for their favourite books and drew a page from the story. We have now all done this activity and feel proud of what we did. We were also able to copy letters of the alphabet and write the name of the book that we chose. Bravo!

We love playing with play dough and sat at the end of the large table, playing with the play dough together with some accessories. The texture is so soft and feels lovely to touch. We en-joy chatting and creating imaginative games while touching it. In order to help develop our fine motor skills, we spent time at one table, colouring with wax crayons and then cutting out irregular lines. We had a squiggly line, a dotted line, a zig zag line, and a wavy line. We took the lines that we cut out home today.

On the floor we chose Lego to put on one of the mats, the large puzzle of the world and the Superheroes puzzle. Our music time was so much fun. We had a large selection of musical instruments to play:

A drum, sound shapes (circles) with a drum stick, castanets, a sasara, bells with beautiful handles, a tambourine and shakers in various shapes and forms. We first played together like an orchestra and when our conductor put her hands up to stay “stop” we stopped playing. Then each group played separately with the conductor. The second time we played we walked around the room and played our instruments high above our heads and low down near the ground. The next time was a little complicated. Shelley chose four dinosaurs in four colours and allocated each group a colour. Bells were blue, drums and tambourine were red, castanets and sasara were yellow and shakers were green. When she held a dinosaur up, that specific group played their instruments and when she put the dinosaur in her pocket, that group stopped. We all had turns individually and then we played together like an orchestra. Thanks for a fun music time!

We played the shoe game again, that Maryna taught us yesterday and Emilie was the “guesser”. It was so funny when she finished guessing whose shoes were whose and she saw our funny feet. Ethan had a proper pair of shoes except they were not his; they were Emilie’s.

We are coming to the end of the month of February and are looking forward to March bringing is some warmer weather with longer days and the sun coming up earlier in the morning.

Thanks for a terrific Tuesday.

Love always

Flowers Class children

We love thinking about how to be kind to our friends in Flowers Class. We are still trying to recognize kind-ness in others as opposed to always thinking about ourselves. Today Lisa received a kindness rainbow and Ava received a kindness heart