There are 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac

Today was the end of our first week at school for the year 2016 and we had a great week. We welcomed Aaila and Taiga and they had fun being back at school. Those of us, who are new to Petals Class, settled in really well and followed the routines and enjoyed playing with our new toys and friends; those of us who know Petals Class really well, were so happy to be reunited with our old friends and “old” teachers. We have to be careful when we say the word “old” to our teachers! Haha! Today we had a small class and enjoyed decorating our hagoita and completing our shuji. Most of us are right handed in the class and when Aaila made her shuji, Hisami had to change hands to help her, because she is left-handed, which was a bit tricky. We would like our friends who haven’t returned to school, to have the opportunity to do some of the art experiences related to Japanese New Year, so we will still lay them out for Monday.

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Our morning today was filled with many different kinds of animals. When we sang our “hello” song and asked Shelley: ‘What is your name?’, she sang “My name is monkey”……which we knew was not correct. She then showed a picture of the twelve different animals in the Chinese Zodiac and each time, she said that she was one of the animals. In the very end, she sang her real name. We each chose one of the animals and spoke about the animals. We chose something about them that we felt was significant. Dominik said that a mouse eats cheese; Sofia said that a rabbit jumps and likes to eat carrots; Taiga said that a snake say “ssssss”,  Shreyas said that a coo says “moo”,

Aaila said that a chicken eats leaves and little things on the ground etc. We all shared something relevant and had a fun time seeing the different animals that we all had. Our teachers are extremely patient and want us to think for ourselves and use our imagination; they are therefore happy to wait until we have found our words and thoughts all by ourselves. Sometimes, they have a big smile when we say things that we are thinking. We sang “Monkey, monkey sitting in the tree” and “Five little monkeys jumping on the bed”.  We changed the calendar in the classroom and learnt that Friday is the last day of our week at school. Monday is the first day of the week, usually and Friday is the last.

When we were sitting together on the carpet, after snack time, we counted how many children were in the class and we did some

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finger plays and sang some rhyming songs. We hid our hands behind our backs and sang “Tommy Thumb, where are you” and then “Open them, shut them”. The last one that we did was “These are my ten little fingers”. We love singing songs and hearing the music of rhyming and playing with sounds in words.

At the play dough table we spoke about making sausages with the play dough so we rolled and rolled and rolled. Some of us made small sausages and some of us made long ones. We ended up with many different sized sausages after rolling together. Our story today was about Dinosaurs; and what ensued from the story is that we would like to make a big dinosaur in our classroom. We spoke about the fact that there are no dinosaurs in the world anymore and learnt the word “extinct”. Dominik said that we can see bones but no more dinosaurs. We then all told our teachers what colour we would like the dinosaur to be that we are going to make. It sounds like it is going to be really colourful. This was a perfect example of “emergent curriculum”.

We want to wish all of our friends and teachers a great weekend and stay warm in the cold wintry weather.

Love always the children in Petals Class.

 

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