A blank canvas

We arrived at school and saw that our classroom on the second floor looked really different. The table was on its side and there was green plastic on the wall and floor and newspaper on the floor too as well as the table. There was an enormous sheet of white paper on the table too. On the floor we noticed some lovely pastel colours of paint. We learnt the word “pastel”. This means light in relation to colours. There was light purple, light blue, light green, light yellow and light pink. We were wondering: ‘What are we going to do today?’ It took a while before we knew because we first had free play time. During free play time, we played with our friends and most of the time was spent building with the Duplo blocks. Usually we play with the trains however today we did mostly building. Miya and Emily were responsible for creating the interesting construction in the photo below. We used so many bricks to build it and everyone helped pack them away so that we could get prepared for the “upside down table” activity. We sat on the floor with our teachers and friends and saw different colours of paint. They were not the usual bright colours but “pastel” as Kana said. There were lighter than usual because she added white paint to them. There was blue, pink, yellow, purple and green. Kana called them “pastel colours”. They are softer than the usual colours that we use for painting. We were going to do a huge group painting using these beautiful pastel colours. We painted two at a time and used brushes and our hands. When our teachers painted our hands it was so ticklish. We laughed while they were doing it and then we printed our hands on the page. We now have a huge work in progress and will do some more work on it tomorrow morning. Shelley is still trying to think of what materials to use on the painting.

We had a fun time singing and dancing together and learning how to stop our bodies quickly when Shelley said “freeze” or “stop”. We walked, ran, jumped, swayed, crawled and in between each movement we stopped like statues. We sang “Skinnamarinky dinky dink”; “Love is something”; “Open them, shut them”; “Hello”; “Everybody stamping”; “Where is Thumbkin” and so many more. We lay on the floor quietly at the end of our music time and listened to the beautiful butterfly music on our CD. We had a “fire drill” today and Shelley explained this to us on the chalkboard. She drew a square and then a triangle on top. We knew that this was going to be a house. Then came a rectangular door and a circle for the door handle. There was a pretty garden too. We learnt that it is best to run out of a house when there is a fire. We should also cover our mouths so that smoke doesn’t go inside our bodies. We pretended that there was a fire in our school, and went down the stairs really quickly. We did a great job.

It was sooooo cold outside when we went to the park to play. Our teachers couldn’t wait to get back into the classroom while we were playing and running around, satisfying our needs and not even thinking about the weather. We loved going down the roller slide with our teachers and yelped with delight as we slid down together like a train. We spent time in the sandbox too and made shapes in the sand with our toys. Sophie made a circle with the silver shape and Emily helped put sand inside some containers. Thanks for a great day everyone.

Love Shelley, Kana, and Darren