What a beautiful spring day

“Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day I’ve got a beautiful feeling; spring may be here to stay!”

We loved our time outside and feel so much freer without our big jackets on. The weather was warm and sunny and we climbed on the very high climbing frame (even Tokutaro); ran around chasing our teachers and our friends; filled containers with water for play in the sand box and had a wonderful time in the fresh air.

We were all together on the second floor for our day at school and there were nine children. The room was filled with warmth, fun, brightness and plenty of learning. Some of us did puzzles and threaded plastic and wooden beads at the tables during free play. We also loved playing with the large fire truck and fill it up with toys. Our teachers say that when it is clean up time, it is like a treasure hunt. We mix the toys up and then they help us find them all so that our toys have all the pieces in their containers.

For one activity we divided the class into two groups so that there was something to satisfy the older children and something else to keep our little friends busy. Gento kun and Tokutaro sat at the table and did a cutting activity in order to help them develop their cutting skills. This was the first time that Gento kun actually cut the paper, showing control and the ongoing development of this skill. Tokutaro is an avid cutter and he combined cutting with tearing at his activity. The rest of us made butterflies based on the ones that Shoko chan brought to school to show us. We used origami paper, straws, rubber bands, sparkly pipe cleaners and markers. We attached the two straws together using a rubber band and at the same time, they had to be in the shape of an ‘X’. We needed our teachers to help us with this part of the activity. We curled our sparkly pipe cleaners all by ourselves so that they looked like antennae and then attached them to the butterfly with transparent tape.

During our discussion time which we incorporated with singing, Shelley made her finger crawl on her leg and it reminded us of a caterpillar. We all made our fingers look like a caterpillar. Then she asked us what the caterpillar was before it became a caterpillar. Noah told us that it was an egg so let our fingers make a tiny circle shape like an egg and then we wriggled another finger and pop! Out came a caterpillar. It crawled around and ate lots of things as it grew and grew and became a really big caterpillar. Miya said that it ate fruit and vegetables. Noa told us that it ate apples, oranges, strawberries, pineapple, banana and plums. We rolled our hands to resemble the caterpillar spinning a cocoon and then we pushed and squeezed and pop again! Out came a beautiful butterfly. We put butterflies on our fingers and helped them fly and dance to the gentle music. We sang our ‘Hello’ song but today we did it in a tiny whisper. We all whispered our names so beautifully and when we sang our snack and lunch time songs, we did the same. We whispered all the words of the songs. We were really good at singing in a whisper.

We love dramatizing stories etc and especially love pretending that we are animals.

We read stories on the mat in small groups and Darren read one about “Farm Animals” to us.

Love Shelley, Darren, and Kana