Let it snow, let it snow.................

We heard that our parents had a fabulous Shinnenkai party at Ohana on Friday night! We were all fast asleep when they came home and had fun with our baby sitters. When we woke up this morning, the ground and roof tops were all white; it was our first snowy day this year. Our teachers said that the weather man got it right because he predicted snow over night and today, with rain. During the day, it rained when we were at school and some of the rain drops looked a bit bigger. We had many friends away today, some because they were not well and others because their brothers or sisters stayed at home. We were glad that Miyashita sensei eventually arrived at school so we could have our first gymnastics class of 2016. We did our animal warm ups where we walk like a bear, a snake, a crocodile and a bird. We also did some stretches so that all of our muscles were warm enough for the next few games that we played. While we were sitting “taisosuwari” Miyashita sensei and Hisami put three lines of tape on the floor. Our first task was to pretend that we were rabbits and jump over the lines. Some of us did long jumps and high

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jumps. The next exercise was to hop up to the first line, jump over it with two feet together; hop to the second line, jump over and it and jump to the last line and jump over it. We had to do this three times. Miyashita sensei gave us high fives when were finished. We played the “ochita ochita game” where Miyashita sensei asks: “Ochita ochita” and we say “Nani ga ochita”. We all stand in a circle and say these words. Ochita means falling down; so Miyashita sensei says something is falling down and we ask him what is falling down. If he says food, then we pretend to eat and if he says lightning, we crouch down on our bended knees and

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hide our belly buttons.  We had a great first gymnastics lesson.

We started off the day watching the rain come down while we decorated our spinning tops at one of the tables. Shelley decorated hers first and we noticed that there were many colours going round and round as her spinning top spun around. We spent a long time making ours also very colourful so that when we spun them, they too had many colours. After we had completed decorating our own one, Liezel taught us how to spin them. The spinning tops spin around when you wrap string around them and then pull the string away; once you know how to spin them, it is really easy. We used Posca markers which are like paints in an enormous marker.

Hisami read part of a beautiful book to us about the snow, during library time and Shelley continued to read it once we rearranged our classroom, after our gymnastics class. Our class today was much later than usual, because the trains were running late.

We changed the calendar and were so excited because we used the snowy picture for the first time. In fact, we used both snowy and rainy because this is the kind of weather that we had today. The story that we read was called “Stella and the snow”. After we read the story we went upstairs to the office and Shelley went to gather some snow for us. We were so excited when we touched it and felt that it was really cold and wet. We had a great discussion about snow which you can read below.

Shelley: Where do you think snow comes from?

Dominik: The sky

Sofie: Up.

Shelley: And where does the rain come from?

Sofie: The clouds make rain

Dominik: The clouds make snow

Sofie: Snow is falling

Shelley: Can you eat snow?

Children: No

When we came back from upstairs we made a snowman and left it on the table at lunch time. We noticed that the bottom of the tray was starting to get water in it.

Sofie: The snow is going

Dominik: It is water. Water makes snow

Chloe: The water is getting cold

Shelley: What happened to the snow now?

Alexa: It is falling

Dominik: There’s lots of water

Shelley: Where do you think the water came from?

Dominik: Snow. Snow is made from water so water is coming

Shelley: How does it go from being snow to water?

Dominik: It broke

While the children were resting, the snowman lost his hat, his nose and his mouth. He is slowly melting away.

Looking forward to another fun day at school tomorrow with some more Petals friends.

Love always the children in Petals Class.

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