Thick oozy mud
Today we made the page for mud, in our “We’re going on a bear hunt” books and when we went to the park, there was just a little bit of mud left over, after the heavy rains. We spoke about mud during the morning and our teachers wanted to know if we knew what mud is really made from. We thought and thought and then Shelley said: “Maybe when we go to the park, there will be some mud; left over from the rainy day yesterday. We still were not sure. Only when we went to the park, did we realize that it is made out of sand and water. The sand in our park is dark brownish so it made the perfect mud. We however, made mud in our classroom using flour, which is usually for play dough, cookies, cup cakes, bread and other things that we eat. Our mud was actually edible, because it was made from flour, salt and brown paint. The paint is not really edible, though if you eat it you can’t really get sick; it just doesn’t taste very nice. When we used the mud inside our classroom to make the mud page, we scooped it onto our page and either used our hands to spread it all over, or we continued using the scoop. Some of us like to get our hands dirty but some of us don’t. It was fun to use our own unique mud that Liezel made and we are curious about how it will dry.
Some of us made our river as well as the mud and Kai started making his forest page, which he filled with trees that he drew. We decided to collect sticks in the park to attach to our forest page so that we have something a little bit 3D in our books; and sticks are real parts of trees. Our rivers are a combination of blue cellophane which was fun to look through as our entire world looked blue. Our teachers were blue, our classroom was blue, and even our drink bottles were blue. We also used blue markers in light and dark blue which we used to draw water on the page. We then pasted the blue cellophane, blue origami and other blue paper on the page as well. We went through the story again and this time, we could tell it without the book.
It is quite easy to memorise the story, because it is repetitive; we just need to try to remember the order of events with regard to the grass, river, mud, forest, snow, cave and house. Yukhei is just like a real artist and he designed the house for us, so that it pops out of the page and then folds back when we close the book. It is called a pop-up house. We are trying to think how we can put the duvet in the house so that it can be the pretend place to hide, just like in the story.
In our classroom we had another unexpected and interesting experience. Our teachers know that when you work with children, there is always something exciting and different that can happen. Expect the unexpected! Yurika came to school this morning with a bag for us which was really heavy. Shelley pretended that she was the “thing” in the bag. She said: “I am oval in shape, I am two shades of
green and when you open me up, I am red or pink inside with little black seeds”. Hana guessed that it was a watermelon. So she took it out of the bag, and we all had a turn to hold it and feel if it was heavy or light. We all thought that it was heavy and we were really strong, to be able to pick it up. Shelley cut it in half and it was so beautiful and pinkish red inside. She cut one part which was in a circle shape and then Hisami cut the entire watermelon up so that we could taste it and have some for snack and lunch. It was soooooo juicy and sweet. Thanks Keiko san, Yurika’s mama, for the delicious watermelon. We thought that maybe the bear would smell it and want to eat it; if we took it with us on our bear hunt! And then another interesting discussion took place and this time, it focused on “What are you scared of?” On the way to the park, we spoke about this and when we returned from the park, we continued the discussion. We are scared of:
Kai: Dinosaurs and real dragons. I am not scared of ghosts. (Later on when one of his teachers mentioned ‘cockroaches’, he added them to his list)
Hana: Monsters
Chloe: Ghosts
Sofie: Dinosaurs
Lina: Bees
Griffin: Crocodiles and bears
Jessica: Monsters in your house
Sofia: Dinosaurs
Yurika: Butterflies
Jeremy: Ghosts, bats and roly poly’s
Yukhei: Ghosts
Shreyas: Penguins (he may not have understood the question as he was a penguin in our show)
Dominik: Ghosts
Yuu: Snakes
Shelley: Snakes and high places like mountains
Liezel: A dark cave
Hisami: Cockroaches
Our days are full and we are having so much Summer School fun.
See you tomorrow for another day going on our bear hunt! Have a great afternoon on this lovely bright, sunny day.
Shelley, Hisami, Liezel, and Yukhei.