Our first letter practice

This morning we welcomed Miyu back to Ohana and Flowers Class. She looked very excited to be in her new classroom and settled really quickly. She immediately got on with her morning jobs and noticed the sign in table we have in Flowers Class. She did a great job of writing her name and soon began to play. We have a new kind of easel in the classroom which has a sheet of clear plastic to draw and write on. Behind the plastic are lots of pictures of facial parts such as eyes, ears, noses ears and mouths while on the other side are pictures of heads and body parts. We used some chalk markers on the surface tracing the body and facial parts. Miyu enjoyed doing this and enjoyed working on both sides of the easel. On the table the play-dough was very popular and many of us used the playdough with the cookie cutters and the extrusion tools to make spaghetti. Next to the play-dough area we took turns with the teachers making our own bodies from card for the wall display. The pieces of our bodies were like mannequin pieces with a head, main body, two parts for our arms and two parts for our legs. We looked at the wooden class model to see the body parts. Once we had collected all the card pieces we arranged them on some black paper so that we could see them properly and looked at a sheet with lots of poses such as dance poses, karate poses, sports etc. Once we had decided what kind of pose we wanted we started to arrange the pieces and glue them together. We had some small photos of our faces and we glued theses onto the head card too. Once the pieces are dry we will start to put some clothes onto our card poses. Kent and Kenichi enjoyed the large alphabet floor puzzle while Gaby played the small ‘balance’ game on the table. The wooden blocks and marble roller game was very popular with Kai and Wesley on the carpet area too. Miyu made her own placemat for snack and lunch time using stamps, stickers and markers at the table too. Wesley then saw the doctor’s equipment and took Ryoan’s heartrate. Kenichi enjoyed using the play guitar and looked like a real ‘rockstar’. After packing away the toys Kai and Wesley checked all the things were back properly and we had our yummy snacks. We then realized that the fish hadn’t had their food and so Gaby and Miyu as our snack leaders kindly helped feed the fish. After snack time we spent some time together in the library area reading books and then sang our ‘Good Morning’ song with Ayaka. It was soon time to review some of our class rules and read a book to help start this called ‘Hands are not for hitting’. We thought of some things we could use our hands for and came up with: Holding things, eating and drinking, playing with toys and waving hello and goodbye. It was soon time to do some fun exercise as we couldn’t go to the park unfortunately because of the rain. We sang ‘Head and shoulders knees and toes’ along with the actions and then the teachers got their magic body remote control to see if it worked and it did. When the teachers pushed the buttons Ayaka stood up, sat down, ate ice cream, swam, rode a bicycle and slept too. We all then tried some of these and it was fun moving around. We then started some ‘Jolly Phonics’ and looked at the letter S in a book. There were lots of pictures on cards too all starting with S including: Snake, spider, snail, seal, spots, sunglasses, six and seashells. We all tried big actions by copying how to write the letter S in the air. We all have a phonics and literacy notebook in the classroom which has some spaces to practice writing the letters and also some space to draw pictures of things beginning with the S sound. Some of us also wrote the names of the things we had drawn next to them by looking at the back of each card too. Have a great afternoon and we look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow.

All our love, Darren, Ayaka, Maki and Ryoan.