We're going on a bear....................

Today was our first day of Summer School and it seems like it is also the start of the rainy season in Tokyo. When we arrived at school, it was pouring and it stayed this way for most of the morning. We could see the clouds were lighter when we started our gymnastics class but the rain kept coming down. Our first story of Summer School is “We’re going on a bear hunt”. We needed to listen to the story early in the day, so that we could understand what we were making at the tables. We sat together and Shelley made some animal sounds which we all guessed. She made sounds like a rooster, a dog, a cat, a tiger, a cheetah and then she asked us if we knew what sound a bear made. Griffin made a great sound for his bear. Shelley then asked us if we want to go on a bear hunt. Griffin said: “I don’t want to” and Rupert too so we said that we would read it from our story book, rather than go on a “real” bear hunt.

We were all really happy when we arrived home, locked the door and hid under the duvet. We saw at the end of the story that the bear went for a walk on the beach. Earlier when we were looking at all of the pages in the book, we commented that we didn’t think bears went to the beach. But at the end of the story, we saw that the bear went to the beach. Maybe this bear liked the beach.

We had time when we arrived at school to play on the mat and choose what we wanted to do. We enjoyed jumping on the small star cushions while Yukhei supervised us. We forgot to tell you that we had quite a few changes this morning for the start of Summer School. Petals Class children and Flowers Class children all joined together in Flowers Class for Summer School; so we could choose where we put our shoes and when we ate snack and lunch, we had no placemats. It was fun to be in a “new” classroom with new toys, new friends and new teachers. Flowers Class children had all the teachers from Petals Class working together. Hisami, Liezel and Shelley had to try to find their way in the room and work out where things were; luckily Ryoan was there to help them. Shelley taught Yukhei when he was four years old and he wanted to come to Ohana and work in Summer School. We loved him. He is so tall and cool! We look forward to playing with him for the rest of the week.

Our plan for the week is to make our own “We’re going on a bear hunt” story books. Today we made the long wavy grass and the five members of the family. Our books are interactive so we can tell the story too. We made the family by tracing our hands, cutting them out and making faces on each finger, at the top. We also made finger prints on each finger tip together with all the facial features that we could remember. Some of us found it a little tricky to cut out our hands so our teachers helped us; and some of us, like Kai, were able to do it themselves. In fact, Kai was a great role model for many of us today. He showed us how to hold our hands still and trace around our fingers; he cut it out by himself; he pasted the grass into his book in his special way; he gave clear instructions for snack time and he knew what to do in Miyashita sensei’s class when it came to throwing and catching a ball. We all need role models in life and it was fun to be together with Flowers Class friends for the very first time. We made cards for Miyashita sensei to say thank you for teaching us during the year. He was so happy when we presented them to him.

We chose different ways to make our long wavy grass. We could snip along lines and paste this kind of grass on our page; we could tear green tissue paper and paste it on the page or use other green material. Every day, we will make more pages until we have finished making all of them, and our book is completed.

We played a new game with Miyashita sensei today, which we think you could call “Don’t let the ball touch you”. We of course, screamed so much as we played the game and tried to avoid the ball. We were all winners. Jeremy was the one who managed to avoid the ball all the way until the end of the game. We played the game twice as the first time, some of us were not sure what to do; the second time, we were more skilled and of course, screamed a lot too.

We continued working on our books later in the day as we stayed indoors, due to the rain. We had a really peaceful rest time with all of us together. In fact, many of us slept because it was so calm and zen-like.

We are looking forward to tomorrow when we go through the deep cold river and make water in our books as well as mud.

Stay dry on this rainy day.

Love always

Shelley, Hisami, Liezel, Ryoan and Yukhei.