What comes out of an egg and what happens when you cook an egg

Thursday, January 22^nd, 2015 It was another cold, rainy day in Tokyo and we were so lucky to be able to stay indoors and do so many interesting things with our friends and teachers; as well as have time for free play and dressing up. You know how important imaginative play is to us…….Michaela and Vincent stayed in costume all day until lunch time. Michaela was a princess dressed in purple and Vincent was an astronaut again. Later in the day Vincent and William L were talking about going to the moon. They said that they needed something with fire to make them go to the moon; and they also said that it was important to wear a helmet for the trip.

Today we learnt some interesting things. We started off our first circle time, looking at the calendar and remembering that “day” was a part of all of the days of the week as well as “today”. Manuel knew all the sounds of the letters. Miyu chan worked out carefully in her mind that today was Thursday. We paid attention to the initial sound of “Thursday”. Even though it starts with a “t”, since it has an ‘h’ next to it, the sounds changes dramatically. You almost have to stick your tongue out to say the sounds “th”. We changed the date to the 22^nd and the weather too, since today was only raining and not snowing.

We counted all around our circle how many children were in our class today and discovered that there were nine children in class. We were so sorry to hear that Taiyo is sick again and Luka is sick too and will only come back to school next week. Odaiji Luka and Taiyo.

Shelley started to sing “Let’s do the number rhumba cha, cha, cha, cha”. We sang the song and sang number nine and number ten. When we got to number ten, we clucked like a hen. Usually when a hen is clucking and it is sitting, it is laying an egg, so we looked underneath on our cushions but there were no eggs. Shelley however stood up and there was an egg. Not a pretend egg but a real egg. We touched the egg, and felt that the shell was hard. Then she cracked the egg open so we could see what was inside and she separated the egg into two bowls. One bowl had an orangy/yellow part which is called the yolk and the other part, she put into a blue bowl. When we looked inside the bowls to see what the egg looked like, we thought that the one part of the egg was blue, because it was in a blue bowl. Our teachers asked us if we knew what would happen to the two parts of the egg when we cook them. Some of us said that the yellow would stay yellow and some of us said that the blue would go black. So they went inside the microwave and…….

The yellow stayed yellow and the other part turned white. That was a really interesting experiment. Shelley then ate the white and Liezel ate the yellow. Every day she eats the white and Liezel and Hisami eat the yellow part.

After snack we sat on the mat and read a wonderful story that Koh chan brought to school. It was called “Not inside this house”. It was about a boy who didn’t like playing with toys but he loved playing outdoors and exploring nature. When he brought bugs into the house his mum said “Not inside this house” so he went to find something else. This time, he brought a mouse inside the house and his mum said the same thing “Not inside this house”. Then he brought a pig and then a moose and then an elephant and in the end his mum let him bring bugs into the house. We were wondering whether this story was about Koh chan and his mummy!

After this we went to the carpet and played a new game. This game is a really good game to help develop the visual perceptual skill called, figure ground perception. We had to look at the two circular cards and try to find two animals that matched. If you look carefully at these two cards, we think that you can work it out. We won’t tell you because we know that you can find the two matching ones. We all were so quick to find the matching animals and wanted to play over and over again. Unfortunately, we had more things that we needed to do, but we will play tomorrow if we have time.

At the activity tables this morning, we painted patterns on hexagonal shaped cards. These are going to become pinwheels. We used cotton buds and made dots all over them.

We sat together afterwards and looked at our names on our flashcards and tried to write them. Tomorrow we will continue working on this skill on small white boards. Our teachers are encouraging us to not only recognise our names in print but also to try to write them. They don’t mind how the letters look, as long as we try to make the shapes of the letters. When we can do this, we can write our own names on our work.

Mika was so excited to share her Show and Tell with us. She brought two books which she told us, her parents bought for her and Maya when they were inside mummy’s tummy. The one book was about animals at the aquarium and the other one was about animals at the zoo. The pictures were real life ones and she compared the length of her body to a fish as well as the mouth of a walrus.

We all loved looking at her books with her. Thanks Mika chan!

Stay warm on this cold afternoon and see you tomorrow.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel