Pass the Parcel

Today we welcomed Finn and Ayaka to the winter school program. It was great to see how quickly they both settled and started to enjoy themselves. Haruka, Sophie and Yuta said good morning to them really nicely too. Sophie, Ayaka and Haruka decided to use the lego house blocks on the carpet and spent a long time making sure the house they built had every amenity including 2 toilets!! Finn and Yuta decided the train set was more fun and they started off by putting together the tracks before we gave them any trains. The track got bigger and bigger and at one point went under the table and out again. All the children then came to the table to see what was happening with the large letter cards. They soon realized that the cards were covered with a layer of plastic. They could then choose the letter corresponding to the first letter of their name and trace around the letter. Using markers they were able to start filling in the inside of the letters with stars, hearts, flowers etc of their choosing. After snack time we went to the library where we read 2 books together. The first was titled “Joseph had a little overcoat” a story about a man cutting down his coat to make other things much smaller. The second book we looked at quickly yesterday “Alphabet Rescue”. We then headed for the second floor for music time with Kana. We started off with some tapping and stamping rhythm work which the children loved. We then played ‘pass the parcel’ where the children pass around a wrapped present in a circle. When the music stops, whoever is holding the parcel unwraps one layer from the parcel. They each got 2 stickers today. We then sang along to ‘Jingle bells’ with instruments too.We looked at the letter A and its sounds today. We sang along to the song:a, a ants on my arm,a, a ants on my arm,a, a ants on my arm,They are causing me alarm. We then played a game where we showed the children pictures of commonly known objects that start with ‘a’. The pictures were shown very quickly and we then had to guess if the writing on the other side would be starting with a capital or a lower case letter. Using the same cards we played a disappearing card game to build vocabulary. In the park the children helped us water the schools flowers which were looking very thirsty!! Have a great afternoon, Kindest Regards, Darren and Kana