Welcome Miya

We welcomed Miya to Ohana International School this morning. She came with her dad, Patrick and she happily said goodbye to him and went to play at the play dough table. Jamie made her feel really welcome as he went up to her without any prompting and said: “My name is Jamie!” Miya learnt our routines really well and we are looking forward to seeing her again on Wednesday. We were also happy to meet her mum, Carolin and her brand new baby, Liam, when they came to pick her up after lunch and we welcome them as members of the Ohana family. The weather was so strange today as it changed so many times. It was cloudy and dark; it rained; the bright sunshine came out and then it became dark again. Nevertheless, whenever we are at school, whether it is raining or the sun is shining, our teachers make our day filled with many different things. Of course we love going to the park, and fortunately today, we did have time to play outside; run around; climb, swing and for our teachers to pick us up and help us sit on the wooden columns that support the parallel bars.

Inside the classroom we did a few interesting things today. During our morning circle, we sat and sang some songs that have actions in them; then we looked at the white board and noticed that there was a large face on it; with only hair. It was our job to find the different facial features and put them on the face. We also learnt a song called “What are my eyes for?” It asks the question of all our facial features; our eyes are for looking; our ears are for listening; our nose is for smelling; our mouths are for talking etc. At the activity table, the one thing that held our attention for a really long time was looking at ourselves in the mirror. We were so curious and turned the mirrors around; lifted them up in the air; laid them on the tables and all the time we looked carefully at our faces and things that we could see that are in our classroom. We noticed that if you look behind you while looking in a mirror you can see so many things that you normally cannot see behind you; as our eyes are in front of our faces and not behind our heads. It was such fun. We used the mirrors to make our faces on paper plates. We had a variety of materials to use e.g. yarn for the hair and other parts on our face that have hair (Finn remembered his eye lashes); googly eyes; foam shapes and paper. We cut our mouths out all by ourselves using small pieces of origami paper. We will use these faces together with photos of ourselves when we make our display for our theme of the month which is “Who am I?”

We spent time looking at books in the library and Shelley read us a story called “Mommies are for counting stars!” We counted 20 stars on the cover of the book and then we sang “Twinkle, twinkle little star”. We realized that our mummies are very similar in what they give and do for us; they give us hugs; they make us feel better when we hurt ourselves; they make food for us; they take care of us in so many ways. Thanks for a beautiful day today.

Love Shelley, Darren and Kanako