Remembering 3.11 and appreciating the generosity of Ohana International School, our school
As you can see we are writing two journals here today; one is from today and one is from yesterday. Yesterday Shelley was not at school because she was working with some of our mums to help set up the hall for the event GIVE, our fundraising event for Tohoku. Hisami, Liezel and Ayaka were our teachers and they wrote down the things that we did so that she could write a journal about yesterday, today. So now we can tell you about the things that we did over two days. Yesterday we played with play dough, threaded beads onto lacing string, we played with really small pieces of Lego, cooked in the
kitchen and we dressed up. We played the touch and feel game where we put our hands underneath the blanket and tried to feel what was there. Underneath the blanket there was a koala, a marker, a phone, a bee, a glue stick, Lego, glasses and a dinosaur. There were many things underneath the blanket. We had to feel each object carefully and take our time before we said what we thought the one that we were touching was. Some of them were more obvious than others. We also played the game where we all hid underneath the blanket and someone said: “Hello……” and we then tried to guess who it was.
We changed the calendar and sang “Do a dear, a female dear” with actions. We were very happy to be able to go to the park yesterday as the weather has been so unpredictable and being mostly cold and rainy when we are at school.
Today we had a lovely morning using the beautiful flowers that Akari’s mum cut out for her birthday party. We threaded them on a necklace before but this time we used them to decorate a tree. It is supposed to be spring time now when flowers start to bloom on plants and trees so we made a tree with beautiful flowers; we hope that this will inspire a change in the weather with warm sunshine and blooming cherry blossoms.
Spring marks many new beginnings with the birth of insects, buds opening and life takes on new colours and changes are all around
us. We spoke about different insects that we know and then Hisami read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and we watched as he ate through the different fruits and grew bigger and bigger and bigger. Then he curled up into his house called a cocoon and stayed there for a few weeks……until he became a butterfly. We sang a cute song about caterpillars turning into a butterfly in Japanese. The song is きやべつのなかからけむしがでたよ……..You can see the picture with the five different caterpillars; one is the mum, one is the dad, one is the brother, one is the sister and the last one is the baby.
We took out our box of musical instruments and did actions using the instruments. We marched around the room, we jumped, we played fast and then we played slowly. We did many movements and tried to co-ordinate the movements while playing the instruments, at the same time. We were so active while we were dancing and playing the instruments we became quite tired so we had a restful time and lay down listening to quiet relaxation music.
We did a new activity at the tables this morning using polystyrene which is that white stuff that sometimes is used when packaging things in boxes. It is not so environmentally friendly but it is great for some art and fine motor experiences. We used coloured matchsticks and pushed them into the foam/polystyrene. We could even make patterns with them. We were curious about the holes that the sticks made when we pulled them out to move them.
We cut along many different lines at one of the tables. We cut zig zags, hearts, triangles, squares and wavy lines. When we changed the calendar we spoke about the significance of this date in our lives, in particular because we live in Japan. We spoke about the earthquake five years ago that shook the ground such a lot, the trains in Tokyo had to stop; even the shinkansens couldn’t drive on the tracks. Hisami said that she saw many of our mums and dads last night when our school had a party to raise money for the people who don’t have houses and things anymore. Next week is the last week of this term and we are going to be celebrating our March friend’s birthdays and we are going to learn about India………. Many exciting things await us next week and we hope that all of our friends will be back at school to enjoy them with us. We wish all of our friends a great weekend and want to thank you for going to the party last night to help our school help the people who don’t have their houses and things anymore.
Love always the children in Petals Class.