Welcome FJ

 “Oh what a beautiful morning,

Oh what a beautiful day

I’ve got a beautiful feeling

Everything’s going my way”

We always wish that everything goes our way, however on some days we have to negotiate with our teachers and our friends and Shelley always says that “this is life”. We all make compromises and we all benefit along the way. Today we welcomed FJ to Darren and Ayaka’s class and she had a wonderful day with all of us. We know that she will spend many happy hours at Ohana.

We had two giant pink feet in our classroom upstairs and Miya, Emily, Shoko, Noa and Oliver all wanted to use their feet and make toe prints on them. FJ and Sophie decorated their placemats and then Noa and FJ spent time playing with the “Bendyroos”. They are long thin strips made from wax and you can bend them into any shape that you want to. They made rings and things and then Ayaka taught them how to make silly glasses which Oliver was happy to wear.

 In the library we read the “Foot Book” again and then we did some of the actions. We ran with “fast feet”; crept with “slow feet”; shook water off with “wet feet” and towelled ourselves for “dry feet”. We played the ‘freeze’ game to the ABC song and then walked, tiptoed, stamped, skipped, hopped and jumped to music. We made a huge circle and then tried to keep a balloon in the air with our feet only. We had to kick it if it came near to us and then we used the parachute and did our best to prevent the ball from falling onto the ground by kicking the balloon underneath the parachute. We sang “If you’re happy and you know it” and did actions with our feet e.g. stamping, shaking, scraping and crossing our legs. Ayaka then taught us part of a Japanese song which is a walking song. It goes like this “Aruko, aruko, watashi wa genki”. We sorted coloured animals into trays using our feet to pick them up. We all tried while sitting to pick up as many as possible before the music stopped.

 Downstairs with Shelley and Goh, we spent time playing with puppets during free play and we also enjoyed some table activities. Today Allie and Eva completed their hearts for Lily’s birthday. After they had used their markers, they pasted small colourful mosaic pieces of paper onto the hearts. We also did some puzzles at the table and had a sorting game with six colours and an assortment of insects in the same colours. We placed them inside the dishes and tried to match the coloured insects with the corresponding coloured container e.g. the purple insects went into the purple container; the green insects went into the green container etc.

 We moved with this activity to the mat and each chose a coloured bowl. Then from all of the insects on the floor, we selected the ones that matched our bowl. We filled our bowls up and then Shelley told us the names of the insects. We all tried to find the ladybug and put all of the ladybugs together; then we found the dragonfly; the grasshopper; the fly; the spider and the beetle. We are learning how to say little phrases when we speak to our teachers and our friends.

We sang our “Hello” song and spoke about the different things that our body parts can do. We have been focusing for a while on our facial features and today we showed our teachers and friends that we have a tongue in our mouth and we taste food with our tongue. We can stick our tongues out of our mouths and try to touch our noses with them…….this is a bit tricky though. We know that you clap with your hands; you pick up toys with your hands; you turn the tap on with your hands and you can also make hand prints which we have all done now. Well, we learnt about the kissing hand from a story called “The Kissing Hand”. This is such a special hand. A mummy can have one and a child. You just have to kiss the hand of someone who you love right in the middle of the palm and their love will be with you all the time. Even if you wash your hand, the love will stick to it.

We hope that Beckett is well tomorrow as he will be 4 years old. Have a good afternoon.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Christine, Nanako, Sabine, Ayaka and Goh.