Happy birthday Tokutaro
Happy birthday Tokutaro! Today is his third birthday and he felt so proud and happy. We had a great celebration with his mum, Miyuki and sang and did actions and gave him his beautiful present that we made for him. When we all arrived at school this morning, we 
decorated his yellow crown, because yellow is his favourite colour. We used markers and stickers and our teachers made three candles out of coloured paper and cellophane. When his mum arrived she arranged cupcakes on a beautiful display and right on the very top was a candle in the shape of number 3. She placed it on the table ready for when we sat down for snack time. We stood in a circle and held hands and did our action song in a circle. We have learnt that a circle is round and we try to make a round shape when we are holding hands. We sang “Let’s hold hands in a circle” and then we did blink your eyes, jump up high, nod your head, kick your legs, run on the spot etc. We sang our “hello” song and Miyuki knew the words so she joined in with us. Eva thought that Tokutaro looked bigger as he was now three years old and she found his crown and placed it on his head so that he looked like a birthday king. We sang “How old are you now?” and Tokutaro replied: “I’m three years old now”.
We also sang ‘When you’re happy and you know it’ and then ‘Three little candles shining merrily’. Vincent presented Tokutaro with his gift that we had made for him. It was a long chain of hearts with wishes on each heart. At the table we counted to three and then he blew out his candle. We had beautiful cupcakes for our birthday treat and want to say a big thank you to Tokutaro and his mum, Miyuki for the special party we had today.
We did an activity that Kevan and Jackie had prepared for us last week when they came to spend the morning with us in our class. The activity was a face shape on a piece of paper, with all the facial features cut up. We spoke about our faces and the different parts that we have on our faces. Our teachers gave us each two eyes, one nose, one mouth and 
two ears and we pasted them wherever we wanted to. They were happy to observe where we pasted them, which of course was interesting. Upstairs, it was our turn to enjoy Kevan and Jackie today. They had prepared six things for us to do:
- We had strawberry, blueberry and orange jelly cubes. We put warm water in a cup and stirred the jelly in until it had dissolved. It was like magic because it changed the colour of the water. The strawberry went red, the blueberry went blue and the orange went orange. We placed the cups in the refrigerator so that they could set.
- We added food colouring to water in a cup and watched as the colour sank to the bottom. We then added oil and noticed that it floated on the top of the water.
- We poured some bicarbonate of soda into a pot. Then we added vinegar and lemon juice and we watched it pop and fizzle in the
bowl. - We took some soda water and poured it into a cup. We added raisins to the water. The raisins were supposed to swell or expand and then float to the top but they didn’t. We thought that this was really funny as we sat and watched them but nothing happened.
- We had a selection of different fruit and vegetables which were cut in half. We looked at the shape, size and colour of the seeds and tried to guess which seeds belonged to which fruit or vegetables. We had tangerines, kiwi, pomegranates, bananas, green peppers, apples, figs and peas and beans.
Jackie then read a book called “David’s fruit”. They were so kind to us and even gave us a gift of pens and lollipops and they baked orange cupcakes for us to eat at snack time. We gave them both a hug to say thank you and bye bye! We trust that they will come back to Tokyo one day and we will see them again.
What a wonderful way to start the week at Ohana.
Love always Shelley, Darren, Ayaka, Nanako, Sabine, Goh and Christine.