I Can Be Nice to My Friends

This morning we were joined by Maki from Buds class who came to meet all the children in Flowers Class for the day. Nanako was downstairs in Buds class this morning to see and meet the children there. Thank you Maki and a big welcome to you! This morning on the main table we saw the large junk art boxes along with rolls of tape, glue, scissors and origami paper. We saw there were lots of coffee containers which are great for making animals with. First we took a cup and then chose which animal we would like to make by looking at some of the small mask pictures we used before. We then chose a piece of colored origami paper which was a little too small to go all the way around the cup but too tall for the cup also. We found that if we cut the paper just right we could use the extra from the height to cover the remaining part of the cup and also make some ears for our animals sticking up from the top or sides. We then got some colored paper to add teeth, stripes, and noses etc. to our animals. We used some wiggly eyes and markers to complete our animal models. They look very cute and we will take them home later this week. On the carpet area Riko brought in one of her favorite games called Uno which she enjoyed playing with Nile and Tokutaro. We also saw on the carpet the clear easel which we used in circle time earlier in the week. Tokutaro and Nile were very funny sitting opposite each other drawing the outlines of each other’s faces and hands. Marc enjoyed dressing up in the astronaut costume with the white helmet and backpack which Lucinda brought in a few weeks ago. Thank you Lucinda. Arata and Riko also enjoyed themselves using the toy kitchen materials and made a class picnic with the long fabric sheet. After packing away the toys and eating snack we read together a book called ‘Hands are not for hitting’. This book shows us all the good things we can do with our hands including eating, drinking, drawing, waving, hugging and saying hello to new friends by shaking hands. We practiced some of the things in the book with our friends including shaking hands and saying “hello”. The park was very warm and we made sure we took our water bottles and also the cooling spray bottle to stop us from getting too hot. We made sure we took lots of drink breaks at the park and played with the bubbles again too. When we came back from the park we looked at another book together called ‘I Care about Others’ which gives examples of how we can be nice to our friends and show them we care about them. We then did some simple role plays where we practiced saying nice things, telling our friends we are not happy and upset and how to look at our friends faces when we speak. We all know how to say the words “Sorry” but wanted to practice with our friends on looking at their faces and using our strong voices if we are unhappy. It was difficult not to smile at our friends when we practiced and had to try really hard to keep a straight face with them. All our love, Darren, Ayaka & Maki