Helping one another

We were happy to see another sunny day today and welcomed Yossi to our new school. He wanted to play on all of the floors as he was so excited to see everything. You can see from the photos how amazed he was when he saw the Lego wall and the Velcro wall and then he helped make the tree for our “Giving Tree” which will be on display in the office. Our “Giving Tree” was made in a really interesting way. Darren had a great idea for the trunk and the branches. He took a large tube from some materials that were used when the building was renovated to become our new Ohana International School. Together as a team, we rolled wire around the tube and this photo below is what we ended up with. Sofia, Jennifer, Miya and FJ were really excited to make the tree and roll the wires. Jenny and Miya twisted the tube while Sofia and FJ pulled the wire really tight. For the branches we rolled the wire around wooden sticks and markers. Ava, Sean, and Margo took part in this activity as well. We will join the branches to the tree trunk to make our sculptural tree form. Yossi’s favourite thing today was the Lego wall and then when he saw Miya crawling through the spaces in the room divider, he went through it as well.

We learnt some new vocabulary today when we were in the library. We learnt that a book with a story in it is called “fiction” and a book where we learn about things like “The Wonders of Learning” series where we looked at the book called “Discover Dolphins”; these are called “non fiction”. In our “non fiction” story today we learnt how dolphins use squeaks, clicks and whistles to talk. They hold their breath when they swim underwater and use a blowhole just like whales do. Their tails move up and down. In another of our activities today, we made fish, starfish, dophins and sea horses for a large collage. We used ribbon, cloth, markers, coloured paper, foam and pencils to decorate them and then cut them out. We really enjoy having a drawer of our own where we can keep our work and go back to work on some things that we have not yet completed. Some of us already started working on things for the collage yesterday but we did not finish them, so we placed them in our drawers and took them out today so that we could complete them. We used green plastic tape which we peeled and tore into thinner lengths to make sea weed which is hanging on the collage. We attached the sea weed with tape from the top only so it can move just like real sea weed. Downstairs we spent time playing with Lego and doing threading, matching cards and completing puzzles. The cards that we took out today were of faces; these faces were from people who live in many different places around the world. The best learning experiences we had today were in our interactions with our teachers and our friends.

In these photos you can see how much we help one another and have fun together. We have learnt the value of sharing and caring and how important it is to use our skills in a positive way; a way that can help others. We know too from our teachers that you can never give enough to others and this is something that we can take with us into our lives more profoundly when we are older.

We missed three of our friends in our class this morning and we hope that Abiya, William and Liam will get better soon so that they can join us either tomorrow or the next day. We spoke about seeds again and looked at our pictures on the wall that we made yesterday. We noticed that the seeds really are tiny. We looked at them through the magnifying glass as this makes them look bigger. In fact it makes everything look bigger and some things look a bit scary when they are too big like our friends and teachers eyes or noses or mouths! We were very happy to see Sabine back from her holiday.

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