Happy birthday Jamie

Today we welcomed Olivia to Shelley, Goh, Nanako and Sabine’s class. We are so happy to have another little girl in our class and she seemed happy throughout the day. She enjoyed doing all the routines and we look forward to many more happy fun hours and days with her in our class. She can speak Spanish and English. We also welcomed Liezl who was the assistant in our class today because Nanako’s little boy is ill. Liezl has two boys and is a midwife and nurse and she took good care of us throughout the day.

 We stayed inside the classroom during most of the morning as we wanted to give Olivia enough time to enjoy playing with the toys and we also showed her the dolls and soft animals, the dress up clothes and accessories as well as the toys on the shelves. She decorated her placemat and when she comes to school on Friday, she will be able to use her very own mat. We all sat at the table when she was using the dot markers and drew as well. Earlier in the morning we played with yellow play dough at the table and we threaded wooden beads onto laces. Some of the beads have pictures on them e.g. apple, airplane, car etc.

We read the story called “This is not my bear”. We loved looking at the bear and touching the different textures. The bear had fuzzy ears; rough feet; shiny eyes and a furry tummy. We sang and did action songs with our friends and teachers. We held hands in a circle and nodded our heads; stamped our feet; blinked our eyes etc. and after each action we said good morning in a different language. We said it in English, Japanese, Spanish, French, Hebrew, German and Chinese. We sang “Open them, shut them” and “Five balloons”. All the balloons popped and decreased in number each time we sang the song. And in the end, there were none.

Outside in the park we became so full of sand and dust and spent a long time climbing up to the top of the slide and then coming down it. We laughed with our friends and tried to come down together. We enjoyed filling our containers up with water and mixing sand and water in the sandbox.

Upstairs we were introduced to Yoga. Each of us chose a Yoga card and we practiced breathing deeply and slowly. The poses that we did today were the shark, tree, mouse, cat and cobra. We were able to contort our bodies into all the poses really well. At the activity tables, we completed our flags which are hanging in the classroom now. Please come inside and take a look at our creations. We are really proud of them.

 In the park some of us are practicing walking on the elephant’s feet. We have to balance on them first, hold the string and then walk. Yossi and Jennifer had a race using them in the park. In the library we read the book “Animals, animals” by Eric Carle. We looked at the pictures of the animals and compared how we all have two legs and two hands and animals have four legs. Octopi have eight legs; giraffes have four legs and whales have no legs at all.

During circle time, we counted how many children were at school today and then how many teachers. We played the song “The ants go marching one by one” and then two by two etc. We all sat on chairs and gradually we joined our friends who were already marching around and dancing. The total number of children today was seven. We were sad that Jamie was sick today because today is his actual birthday. We hope that he will get better soon and return to school so that we can celebrate with him and his mum and dad.

We looked at our large map of the world and remembered the flags of The Philippines and Israel. We asked Yossi who comes from Israel and Nico who is from The Philippines and Belgium, to place the ribbon from the country to the matching flag.

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