Taiko at the patio

The air outside is a lot cooler and this makes our outside time in the park, far more enjoyable. We run around and do not get so tired, hot and sweaty and our teachers no longer stand under the trees to observe us and see that we are safe.

Today when we were outside in the park (the children in Shelley and Nanako’s class today) we heard a lot of loud noises. Shelley and Nanako recognised the sound of taiko drums so we all held the rope and walked to the area in Azabu Juban which is called “the patio”. And what do you think we saw there? Yes we saw lots of taiko drums and ladies playing them. We found a seat on the steps and watched their show. Our teachers were amazed at how we sat fixated, watching the ladies playing the drums and both listening to and feeling the sound of the drums. There were some large drums and some smaller ones and they made different sounds. At the end of the show, the ladies gave us some taiko sticks and we could play on the drums as well. We had the most wonderful time and here are a few photos from our time there.

 We went back to the park to play with our friends for a while before heading back to school for lunch. We started our day completing our drawings and pasting on circle shapes. We started drawing on them with sparkly pens yesterday and today we will continue drawing and add some other circle shapes to them. We are learning about big and small things and can identify a small circle and a big one. We have also noticed that a small circle can fit inside a big one but a big one cannot fit inside a small one. We did some cutting but are not 100% sure about how to use a pair of scissors. We have been using them with the play dough and our teachers feel that we still need to do more “pre-scissors” activities. We all tried on the eye mask and told our friends and teachers that we could not see anything. We also hid underneath the beautiful shiny orange piece of fabric. We are trying to use our senses in fun ways. Upstairs we were happy to welcome Noa and Yossi back to school. There have been many Jewish holidays lately so that is why we had not seen them for so long. We also hope that Miya is getting better. Noa and Yossi traced animals on the light box this morning. Noa traced a parrot and even cut it out herself. Nico made another lizard but this time he drew spots and eyes on it. Yesterday he pasted wiggly eyes on the one he made. We played with the large soft toys and enjoyed slithering around like a snake. We sometimes talk to the toys as they are puppets. In the library we read the book “Animal Sounds”. We selected a page at random and then made the sound like the animal on that page. We also read a question and answer book on animals. We paged through the book and when one of us saw an animal that we recognised we stopped and looked at it and tried to see what it was eating. We saw that horses eat hay, giraffes eat leaves and snakes eat eggs and other small creatures.

 We sang “Five little ducks went paddling away” and then we used our remote controls to give instructions to our friends and teachers. We told them to move like a tiger; to slither like a snake; to look like an elephant etc. We looked at another interesting book in keeping with our theme about animals. It is called “The Great Earth Search”. We looked at animals to see the various patterns that they have on their bodies. We noticed that some had stripes, some had spots and some were plain. We then went to the activity table and experimented with different colours. We mixed some colours and we also made different patterns on our paper. We each had our own pallette with red, blue, and yellow in it. We mixed the paints as we pleased trying to think of the animals we are learning about and know. We painted stripes, spots and other patterns and then we took some black paint and made the patterns look like real animal patterns e.g. spots of a ladybug; stripes of a tiger etc.

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