Friends

Today was such a quiet day at school we were able to really engage with our teachers and they also had time to prepare our Workbooks/Portfolios for us. We missed Noah and Jamie and our friends who are starting next week and the week after however we had a lot of quality time together with one another and with our teachers. Finn actually became the teacher during circle time. You may be asking yourself the question, how could this be? Well, we were sitting in a circle on the mat; Shelley started singing, “Let’s tap our knees together” which is the same tune as “We all clap hands together”. We were singing together and doing actions when suddenly Finn’s eyes lit up as he had obviously recognized the tune. So he started to sing “We all clap hands together”. Then he added all the movements and words that we had done yesterday when we sang the same song and after that he started to talk and tell us what we must sing next. He sang all of the songs that we sang yesterday and he sang in a beautiful loud voice. It was really fun to be a part of this circle time as he was so animated and enthusiastic and was enjoying every moment of being in charge and guiding his teachers and his friends. And then he had some requests. He wanted us to do the “bowing song” as he put it and the “freeze” song.  We used our bodies well and then we ended off being little seeds like we did at our end of the year party. We curled up on the mat just like tiny little seeds. We told Shelley that we needed water, sunshine and shade. So she sang “It’s raining, it’s pouring” and pretended that she was the rain pouring down on the seeds; she then became the sunshine and sang “Good morning Mr. Sun” and then we all sang and dramatized the song “I am a little flower”. We grew really tall and became beautiful flowers and then danced together in a circle. Afterwards, Nico wanted to do some more actions and he ran around on the carpet. Finn also suggested that we do the train song, but now it was time to get ready for snack. When we completed our snack, we played with our new blue play dough; Finn drew a picture and Nico decorated his place mat. Our teachers are really quick as they laminate our placemats as soon as we are finished decorating them and we are able to use them for snack straight away. We read the story called “Friends” which is a translation from a Japanese story called “Tomodachi”. The story tells us that we have different friends for different things that we like and do. Each one we treasure for the things that they bring into our lives and we hope that we bring something special into their lives too. Before we read our stories, we put our T-stools together and twisted the leg into the base. We sat on them during the story which helped us focus on the story and pay attention rather than be distracted by other books or things around us. We are looking forward to seeing more of our friends tomorrow and hope that everyone has a great afternoon.

Love Shelley, Darren and Kanako