Calligraphy and Spinning Tops

It was with great sadness that Shelley was unfortunately unable to be with us today due to continuing to feel unwell. We wish her all the best and hope she recovers soon. We welcomed back F.J today to the classroom today from her winter break trip to Australia. A big ‘Thank you’ to Jocelyn for the koala bear gift for the teachers.They are not only cute but useful too!! Tokutaro and Clodia had a great time with the play-dough making shapes such as stars and crabs together and then put lots of it together to make what they described as ‘Rocks’. On the carpet the cars and trucks were very popular along with the puzzles on the small table. At one point Lily asked Tokutaro “Are you okay”? after Liezel explained to Tokutaro that he may hurt himself if he is not careful. He then invited Abiya to come and play with him by saying “Look, Tokutaro and Abiya have the same hair color” , “Lily and Clodia have the same hair color”. So cute and considerate of him ! Miya and Noa worked together on the table to make a crown for Emily’s birthday at the end of the month. We headed to the park early this morning as we knew that we had kit –fit later in the morning. In the park Shoko, Nico, Emily and Miya decided to collect stones and when we asked them what the stones were for Shoko replied “We are building a house so the bad wolf can’t get us”. In the kid fit session we started a new theme ‘The Heart’. When Jet Sensei showed them a picture of a valentine heart and an illustration of a ‘real’ heart they all said they thought their real heart looked like the ‘valentine’s’ version. To get our hearts working we started some exercise with a walking then balancing exercise. We each had a black circle on which to stand while trying several balancing poses such as balancing on one foot, balance like an airplane, playing a guitar on one foot etc. We then chose a partner and used a soft inflatable football with our friends. We started by playing catch and then tried kicking it across the room. We then had a great time going around a group of different exercise activities. We started by stepping on black circles like stepping stones then went through a plastic tunnel on our hands and knees. Hopscotch was next and then rolling on our sides across a mat. The final activity was walking along a low foam balance beam before circling around to the stepping stones again. On the second floor we did our first calligraphy writing for the year. We worked on the word ‘Sho’ which goes with the word ‘gatsu’ to mean ‘New Years Day’ in Japanese. First the teachers helped us write the words on a white piece of paper and then we tried it by ourselves. The children from the 3^rd floor also started a traditional Japanese activity involving ‘Koma’ which are spinning tops. The ones we had were wooden and a little plain so we decided to decorate them a little and try them out. We used paint markers and regular water based markers to draw on the tops sides and bottoms and will continue to decorate them on Monday. We hope you all have a great weekend and look forward to seeing you next week. Love always, Darren, Shelley, Nanako, Ayaka, Christine, Goh, Liezel and Sabine.