Happy birthday Darren
It was such a lovely weekend that some of us just wanted the holiday to continue. Our teachers were happy to see lots of happy mums and dads today and very happy, energetic children. They said that we had extra energy today; maybe it was because we missed all of our friends and teachers and were ready to return to school and learn and have fun.
Today we celebrated Darren’s birthday with the whole school. We think he knew that something was “cooking” as some children went downstairs during the day last week and then Ayaka came down to do something. We think that he may have guessed that we were organizing a party for him. This morning you could smell a cake cooking in the oven in preparation for the party. It was around cake with icing sugar and coloured sprinkles on top. We were all so excited to eat it.
Darren came downstairs with his class and they joined us on the second floor where we had a table laid for him. It had a cake 
on it, with six candles as he is forty six now; we had an orange hat for him to wear as well as a gift that we made. Some children from his class wrote “happy birthday Darren’ on the envelope and drew really beautiful pictures. Margo, Sophie and Emily were mostly involved in doing this activity. They especially loved putting stickers on the envelope as well and were curious as to how many stickers they could use.
We stood in a circle and held hands and sang together “Let’s all hold hands in a circle”. Some of us gave our teachers ideas regarding actions that we can do; we jumped, hopped, turned around, clapped, nodded our heads, blinked our eyes etc. Then we sang “How old are you now?” and did lots and lots of clapping. We clapped forty six claps in total which we think was quite a lot. We also sang “Darren is 46 today”. We used the number six for our counting in different languages as most of us know how to count to six. We counted in 
Japanese, English, French, Tagalog, Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew and German. Olivia presented Darren with his gift and we told him that he should try to guess what there was inside. He thought maybe frog but we didn’t hear it making a noise; then he thought that there would be cards; we told him that he was getting warmer. Tokutaro said that the cards are a special heart shape. So Darren closed his eyes and he pulled the ribbon; and he pulled; and he pulled. The heart wishes were so long that he had to choose three children to hold the ribbon for him.
We all ate snack together and then we went to the park together as well. When we came back, we continued to work on our large canvas downstairs, using oil pastels and upstairs we had a fabulous time playing mini-ping pong on one of our activity tables. We all loved playing and showed good fine motor co-ordination as well as eye-hand co-ordination. Nico changed hands so that he could get shots on each side, a lot easier. Beckett asked everyone to play with him and you can see that he has a great style from the photo.
Downstairs we asked all of our friends and teachers to choose two items of food that they love to eat and we sang a song using everyone’s names. Marc likes to eat candy and chips, Clodia likes to eat cheerios and pasta, Liezel likes to eat potato and chicken, Tokutaro likes to eat rice and chicken, Vincent likes to eat rice and popcorn, Olivia likes to eat rice and apples, Abiya likes to eat chipati and curry, Zachary likes to eat rice and chicken, Lilian likes to ear carrots and cucumbers, Goh likes to eat ice cream and banana.
Upstairs in the library we read a non-fiction book about “Birds”. We looked at the photos and then went to the activity table to make a finger painting of a bird. We looked at the eye of the bird; what 
colour was it? How big was it? Then we looked at the beak and again looked at the colour, shape and size of it. We never realized that just with your fingers, you can make a painting of a bird. We will work on them during the rest of the week and complete them then.
Love always Shelley, Darren, Nanako, Ayaka, Christine, Goh, Liezel and Sabine.