Unicorns, Fruit Basket & Snowy Sheep

This morning was raining again so unfortunately  we were unable to go to the park. We still had lots of fun and had movement and music in the classroom.  On the table when we first arrived we saw a large sheet of black paper on the table with some white farm animal cutouts. We used the special ‘clutch pencils’ with the card stencils to make our own farmyard pictures. We could add grass, flowers, fences and farmhouses to our drawings too. Once we had drawn the outlines to the animals we then used some colored pencils to fill in the shapes. Next to the drawings and stencils we also saw the Styrofoam animals we have been making over the last few weeks. Today we attached them to our own mini-farms we have been making by applying glue to the animals feet and then sticking them down on the green grass. We had to be a little careful where to put them as we didn’t want to cover up our beautiful barns we decorated last week. Riko came to make a Styrofoam animal to add to her farm too and decided she wanted to make a sheep which she colored and we attached as well. On the second table Alexis and Marc saw the colored yarn weaving we started a few weeks ago. They used the plastic needles and threaded the needle under and over to form the fabric and also added beads as we went. On the carpet the toy trains were out and we haven’t seen these for a while and wanted to build a track to play on. The track and ball blocks were also popular this morning with many of us building the blocks into towers and patterns. After packing away the toys we had a short ‘good morning’ time where we check the calendar. Today, we added practice for the new Ohana song and took the first paragraph. It was good fun and we tried to see who were the best singers, the boys or the girls. It turned out we sounded better when we all sang together. It was soon time for Jessica’s ‘Show & Tell’. Jessica let her friends try and guess what she had brought today and then she showed us her beautiful pink soft toy unicorn. She told us how it is from mummy and Santa and his name is ‘Pinka’. Pinka has a bed but Jessica decided not to bring that with her today and Pinka also doesn’t have a horn. She had two a big unicorn and a small one. Jessica told us how she sometimes brings the big one and sometimes the small one. Jessica also told us how she brought it because it looks nice. When asked which one she likes best she told us “the big one because of the dress it wears”. Thank you Jessica for a great Show & Tell. You did a great job! After the Show & Tell we together read a book called ‘The Very Cranky Bear’ which was very funny and then Ayaka showed us how to play a game called ‘Fruit Basket’. In this game we each got a chair to sit on and then Ayaka gave each of us a farm animal toy. When Ayaka said the name of one kind of animal we had to stand up and find an open chair before our friends. If we were last then we needed to choose an animal to continue or call out “Farm Animals” which was the cue for all of us to change seats. It was lots of fun and we had many winners each time. Together in the circle we then got the scrap Styrofoam and saw how it floated down just like snow when we crushed it and could then sprinkle it around. The Styrofoam was sticking to everything including our hair, faces and hands. Luckily we had a place to put it. Darren brought out 2 big card sheep but they didn’t have any white wool on their bodies. Once we had crumbled all the Styrofoam we came to the table and sprinkled it onto the sheep bodies. The Styrofoam was very difficult to pick up and we then used some wide sticky tape to collect the pieces from the floor and our clothes. The farms and big sheep will be on display in the classroom this week so please come and take a look if you get a minute. Thanks Have a great afternoon.