Jewelers and Chess Grand Masters

Today we had a special day making jewelry with our friends on the table. To make bracelets we first chose a piece of colored twine which we cut to a little longer than we needed to go around our wrists. Onto the end of the twine we tied a small bead to stop all of the other beads from falling off. We then started to add colored beads to the end of the twine and pushed them down to make a beautiful bracelet for ourselves or our mommies. The teachers helped us tie the ends of the twine together nice and tightly. On the table next to the jewelers, the chess grand-masters were at work learning a new move. Today we added the knights to the board. The knight moves in an ‘L’ shape fashion e.g. two squares forwards then one sideways or one square forwards and two squares sideways. The knight on horseback is also the only piece on the board which can jump over other pieces. Just like a horse jumps over fences and other pieces the horse can too. Our master chess players Tokutaro and Eito started playing and it was a hard fought game but Tokutaro came out on top. It takes a lot of practice to be good at chess and we like practicing with our friends. Next to the chess players the carpenters Marc, Alexis and Jennifer were hard at work finishing a white table. All we needed to do was to spread out some glue on the top of each leg and then attach it with 3 big screws. We used some white PVA glue and a glue spreader to make sure the glue was in all the right places and then used the big red cross headed screwdrivers to put the screws in nice and tight. On the carpet the train set and large duplo blocks were very popular and Kosei built a big tower with a crane on the top and places to park the cars at the bottom. After free play time and snack we headed to the park in the sunshine. It was cold in the shadows but nice and warm in the sun. In the fenced area we used some large plastic rings to play some new games. There was a cone in this area and so we stood back from the cone and saw if we could throw the ring over the top of the cone. We also tried rolling the rings on their sides to see how far we could make them go. We also found in the same bag some clips to hold the rings together and managed to make a giant circle with the rings and the plastic connectors. In circle time we put out a ring of animals which represented all of us in the class including the teachers. If anyone was not part of the group we moved the animal away from the circle until the friend became part of the circle time group again. We then looked at some plastic letters and made the sounds that the letter makes. We also thought of some other words that began with the same sound. There was a plastic rectangle for each of the letters and a space for a picture. We soon realized that the pictures also started with the same sound, for example the letter ‘O’ had a picture of an octopus with it. Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Nanako and Goh San