What are my eyebrows for?

We are on the final leg of the year and it was a busy day at Ohana today. We had a fantastic assortment of materials to use on the large activity table; junk art materials plus markers, tape, scissors and paper. We spent more than hour creating together with our friends and it was great to see so many children working together at the same time. We learn so much from one another each day and on Thursdays we have lots of children all together in one class and the end result is always amazing. Our teachers love seeing us helping one another; learning from one another; teaching one another; reading to one another; cooking with one another etc. This harmony is the music of Ohana! Going back to the activity, we made so many interesting things with the empty cartons and things. Noa made a boat with a funnel; Miya made something with two big eyes and many of us just enjoyed taping containers together, drawing and using our creativity to just enjoy the process rather than worry about the product. Rachel sat with us and helped us while we worked at this activity. She unfortunately helped one of our friends while they were cutting and her finger got in the way. “Ow”, she said. She was really brave even though there was blood and when it was clean she put a band aid on her finger.

Today we made plenty of music too. We listen to music during the day and sometimes we keep it in the background however today, we took out the box of musical instruments and played them while the music was playing.

Miyuki sat with us at the small drawing table because we have some friends who are leaving and we want to make something for them to keep so that they remember us. Noah is going to ASIJ as his big sister and brother are going there; Jamie is going back to England and Isabelle is returning to Canada as planned. We will miss them all so much as they have been such special friends to us all at Ohana. Noah has great ball skills and we always see him bouncing, kicking, catching and throwing a ball; Jamie is a great conversationalist and he always helps our teachers in discussions as he has important thoughts to share and Isabelle loves her days at school and has many beautiful things to share when we are chatting at group time; she also always wears beautiful things in her hair and looks so pretty. We think that they will like what we are making for them.

We are also preparing for the end of the year celebration at school and our teachers have been thinking about what to put up on display for next week. We will work on something tomorrow with Shelley, Goh, Sabine and Miyuki.

When we sat in our circle today we first chatted about our faces and thought about the different facial features. Each time we sang a song about them and asked what they are for e.g. eyes are for looking; a mouth is for talking; a nose is for breathing; hair is for rubbing; ears are for listening; a forehead is for touching and then we discussed in length what eye brows are for and each of us had different thoughts. Miya said she thought they were for having near your eyes; Shoko said they were for closing your eyes; Miyuki said they were for making your eyes bigger; Kana said they were for lifting; Rachel said they were for looking surprised and Shelley said that they were for catching our sweat so that it didn’t drip in our eyes. It was an interesting discussion. We sang our “hello” song with all of us saying our names together. We thought it sounded a little silly as our friends couldn’t hear us saying our names and we couldn’t hear them saying their names. We also sang “Five balloons” and we spoke about the many different things that we can do with our hands. We clapped, clicked, tapped etc. Thanks for another fun day at Ohana.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Kana, Marie, Rachel and Miyuki