Aliens

This morning we arrived to see our planets Mercury and Venus we made with paper clay last week on the table. The paper clay had dried and we could start coloring them. Mercury being the smallest of the planets was very small and a little difficult to paint with paint markers without getting some on our hands. We also saw the light-box with black paper to make our sheep star sign pictures. Mark, Lucinda, Jennifer and Arata all chose a sheep picture and using a sharp pencil they made holes in the black paper. When they had been around the sheep outline we removed the paper and made some further holes to look like stars. We put our star sign artwork on the window to show the light coming through them. Please take a look when you visit the classroom. On the carpet the wooden ball track blocks were very popular with Olivia and Tokutaro making a big tower together. Olivia, Nile and Riko enjoyed playing in the toy kitchen area with lots of food. We headed for the park early today as we needed to be back in time for our weekly gym class with Tanaka Sensei. In the park it was surprisingly warm and we saw there were some big boys playing soccer in the fenced area so we couldn’t play in there today. We got the tennis balls and played catch and tried throwing the ball as high as we could. In our gym class with Tanaka Sensei we started off by making a space for ourselves, stretching our legs, backs and necks. We then warmed up a little by jumping and then tried some balancing by putting our arms out to the sides and then walking on a taped line on the floor. We then did some movement with actions by walking and when we heard the whistle we had to jump like a bear, a frog and a crocodile. We then played a game where we had to find a partner when we heard the whistle and sit down with them We tried the same activity with groups of 3 of us too. We also tried our poses for a giraffe, lion and a dolphin which was a lot of fun. We then played a game involving paper, scissors, stone where we had to get together with our friends into teams and then our team leaders did paper, scissors, stone with the other teams. Arata turned out to be the winner of this game, well done Arata!! After gym class we all sat together to talk about ‘Aliens’. This came about as Olivia on the way back from the park asked the teachers “Why does no one know if Aliens are real or not”? We tried to answer as best we could but decided in circle time to ask the children to tell us what they thought aliens might look like. We got lots of suggestions about body shapes, number of eyes, number of legs and even heads. On the main table we then got to make our idea of an alien using playdough, colored matchsticks, wooden beads and wiggly eyes. On the table next to it we added a small Ohana sticker with the year to our shuji (Calligraphy) using glue and then had our photo taken holding our ‘Hagoita’ bats. These pictures will be added to our portfolios for the end of the year. Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako