Happy 2nd Birthday Tokutaro
We all celebrated Tokutaro’s 2nd birthday together with his mum. We sat on the mat and Tokutaro wore his crown which Jamie said made him look like a king. We sang “When you’re happy and you know it” and “Tokutaro is two years old today” while we were on the mat. We also said that when we have a birthday, we get presents. We always make a 
present for the friend who is celebrating in our school and we gave Tokutaro a large blue envelope with stars attached to one another. They are filled with our drawings and wishes.
We want to thank his mum Miyuki for her generosity. She made us cupcakes which we sooooo delicious and she also made us “shirashizushi”. Some of us ate so much food that we didn’t have space in our tummies to finish our lunch. Thanks Miyuki san, we had a great time celebrating with you and Tokutaro. Tomorrow is his real birthday so when he wakes up tomorrow morning, he will be two years old.
During our circle time upstairs, we used the light box with coloured beads and Albert the Alligator’s teeth. We cleaned his teeth with brushes and then after the birthday party, we cleaned our own teeth with our real toothbrushes and toothpaste. This was fun. Some of us feel that the toothbrush is ticklish; nevertheless we know how important it is to 
brush our teeth to keep them healthy as well as our gums. Our gums are the pink part in our mouth that teeth are held in really tightly and they need to be kept healthy too.
When our friends came upstairs for the birthday party we did the “Body Rap” song. It is a ritual for us now and is a form of exercise for us each day, in the classroom. We were doing Yoga when they came into the classroom so they joined in for our last pose which was the “Do nothing doll”. In this pose all we do is breathe deeply and do nothing. The other poses which we did today were shark, bridge, fish, table, dog, cobra and hero.
Downstairs we are trying to strengthen our fingers so that we can learn how to hold markers and crayons correctly. We 
had some red pegs and plastic cups. Our job was to squeeze the pegs and try to attach them to the rim of the cups. Some of us needed to use two hands as our little fingers are still not strong enough. We also did some threading with laces and wooden beads. On the mat, we played with the Ampaman blocks and built a house for all of the animals. We are learning the names of the animals and Eva knows them all. We put the lion, rhino, hippo, giraffe, ostrich, elephant, crocodile and zebra into the house. We also used musical instruments today when we did our movement to music. We used bells, maracas and tambourines. We did walking, jumping, hiding and stomping and we also learnt how to stop and freeze. We love this part of our movement 
games. We sang “Open them shut them”, “Everybody clapping”, “Tommy Thumb” and when the music is playing on the CD we also join in when we know the words. We hope you have a great weekend and look forward to a beautiful day on Tuesday for our Sweet Potato excursion. We want to wish all of our friends who are having a vacation next week, to please travel safely and we look forward to welcoming you back.
Love Shelley, Darren and Kanako