Getting ready for the holidays

We all know that Eva and Oliver are leaving to go and live in London at the end of this term and today in Eva’s class, she told Goh that she was going to London with her mummy and daddy. Goh asked her how she was going to go to London and she told her that she was walking there. Goh then said to her that she thinks they are going on an airplane to which Eva replied: “No we are walking!” We hope that it doesn’t take them too long, as we think that walking is not such a good idea especially since it is winter and they have to cross the ocean in some places!

 We had many long chats today and one that went on for a long time and where we had amazing concentration was when we were having circle and story time. Vincent and Tokutaro had been sitting with her and together they were naming pictures and singing the sounds of the alphabet. Of course we are always curious and so we all landed up sitting with them and going through the ABC book with lots of singing. When we came to the “m” we saw the moon and Shelley sang “Oh Mr. Moon!”; when we came to the “s” for sun she sang “Good morning Mr. Sun”; when we came to the “d” for dog we all sang “There was a farmer had a dog”; when we came to the “u” for umbrella we all pretended to hold our umbrellas and sang “It’s raining it’s pouring” which then led us to learning how to sing an echo song. Shelley and Goh demonstrated to us with the song “I hear thunder” and then we tried to join in. Then we copied the words that she was saying and we sort of understood what she meant. We will try it again tomorrow.

At the activity table, Eva and Allie completed their contemporary art paintings and then they pasted sparkles and gems onto their stars. We all did a lot of drawing, cutting and threading today and had a wonderful time in the park collecting leaves.

Upstairs we had a big class and also lots of things to do during the morning. We had our stars made from paddle pop sticks which we could paint in silver or gold and then paste beautiful gems and sparkles on. Yossi and Sophie worked painstakingly on theirs selecting carefully what they wanted to paste onto their stars. We are in the middle of preparing a card for Oliver and Eva’s farewell. Nico spent a long time working on it and drew a mountain for them. We are not sure if this is symbolic in a way, nevertheless he put so much time, effort and care into drawing it for them. We have almost completed our festive season cards which cover Channukah, Christmas and the other festivities that take place at this time of the year. We wrote our names on our cards and pasted a message inside them. Sophie and Yossi are now working on their second card for the one canvas.

 Our story today was a rhyming book about Christmas. We had to look carefully at the book, listen to the words and see if we could work out what words rhymed in each sentence e.g. far rhymes with star, soon rhymed with moon etc. we love rhyming as it is almost like we are singing a song.

Another activity that we did at the table today was a seasonal picture. We used the still life materials that our friends from downstairs gave to us; it was made up of apples, pinecones and a piece of branch from a fir tree. We had a big selection of materials to use in order to create our own picture completely from our own imagination and choice. We had coloured markers, green and silver origami, glue, coloured pencils and more. Some of us made snowmen pictures; some of us made tree scenes with houses etc. Each one is unique. We added another colour to our “Jackson Pollock” canvas and this time it was orange. It was a softer orange than expected. We put the colour on from the diagonal points on the canvas so that they created a new kind of design.

We did fire drill today and remembered to cover our mouths as if there was a fire. Pretending is much easier than when they really happen.

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