Handprint Leaves
It was a bit rainy outside but the Buds were excited to welcome Monday. Lisa, Dominik and Sofia played with our sensory bin. The contents of our bin were sand and the different cupping and scooping tools together with the magnifying glass.
Our circle time was a bit different too. We looked at our 
special book that John showed us. The book was about red, green, blue and yellow. We also talked about the different sense of touch, and they were soft, bumpy and fluffy. For example, a soft duck, a bumpy frog, and fluffy bird. Sofia and Nikolas enjoyed touching the different animal and their textures from the book and Sofia kept on repeating the word fluffy.
We also got some letters. We learned the sounds of S, L, N, R, D and K. These letters corresponded to our names. Rei-chan proudly said “R”. And gradually, she’s learning that her name starts with R. Sofie knew the sound of the first letter of her name which was “ssss”. And she later found out that this sound was “S”.
It was our gym time today too. The Buds were so ready to play with Tanaka-
sensei again. We heard that we will have our last day with him next week so might as well spend and cherish this moment with our dear teacher. First, we did some warm-up exercises and some postures that we have learned from the previous sessions.
Our game today was about “stop and go”. Tanaka-sensei would say “blue” and that means go and “red” means stop. We were all having a great time and it was nice to know that everyone was participating well in the game. Sofia and Sofie were also running together but when they heard Tanaka-sensei saying red in Japanese, they would also stop.
Our next game was the truck game. When the truck was not around, we can move. But when the truck comes, we have to stay and stand against the wall so that it 
won’t hit us. The Buds amazingly managed to get out of the way and most of us were trying our best to stay closer to the wall as much as we could. Nikolas, Sofia and Dominik were very attentive when the truck comes and Tanaka-sensei was also funny when he did the truck action.
The last but our favorite game was the pancake circle, we all held our hands together in the circle and Tanaka-sensei would then say, “Let’s eat the pancake” until our pancakes turned into a small yummy cookie. We would then eat the cookie and we would all say, “It’s so delicious!”
After our gym time, we went back to our classroom. And
our art table was waiting for us. We saw some newspapers and paint. We did some hand print art today. Dominik chose red, Sofie picked green and Rei started her art with yellow. Before using all the color paint, our teachers reminded us on how to dip our hands in the paint and we needed to be very careful in stamping our hands on the paper. Other kids were busy with their role-playing games. Sofia found some necklaces, Nikolas put on the helmet and Rei got a phone and pretending to call someone. Sayaka and Maki got road map. And we all enjoyed moving our cars on the mat.
We also read some stories about “The Runaway Bunny”. We haven’t finished this one but John said that he’s going to read the book again tomorrow. So, we’ll just have to wait for it. Another book that we read today was about the famous “Spot” the dog. The book explained what Spot likes to do every day. And we noticed that he’s almost doing the same thing as what we do at home daily. For example, we like to eat, brush our teeth and go to sleep.
It was also music time today and our teachers gave us the different musical 
instruments that we can play. It was nice to learn the different musical concepts such as tempo and rhythm patterns. We could play slowly and quickly and we could also stop when our teachers would ask us to. Sofia liked to play with the tambourine and the small drum. Dominik got the maracas, Sofie and Lisa took the bells. Kaia got the scraper.
Thank you so much Ohana for taking care of us today again. We always love doing the special activities that we have in the classroom. Hope to see you all tomorrow!
Lots of love,
John, Sayaka and Maki