Lots of focus and concentration!
We had a great start to our day with some relaxing yoga on the carpet. We look forward to our yoga lessons at other times and this was especially good for us. We had lots of energy to concentrate afterwards and spending the day inside is usually not so easy for small children; but we had a great day. Most of the postures that we did this morning were ones that we knew especially the cobra and the table. There was one tricky one where we had to put our elbows together. It was really difficult to do and we felt that we had to twist our arms to get into this position. Next time it will be easier as we now know how to do it.
We had some interesting activities to do this morning. We used the light box once again but this time we put blue sand on top and the dark sand with the light behind it made it eerie and exciting. We used our fingers to draw with and we also used some small shapes on the sand.
The activities that we did at the tables demanded plenty of concentration from us and we were able to focus for quite a long time. The one activity was tracing our names which we did using tracing paper. We placed the tracing paper over our names that are written on a large card. Most of us managed to fit three names onto the one page. The second part of this activity was then drawing our name which we did amazingly well and the third part was using a piece of coloured paper, a piece of Styrofoam and a toothpick. Our names were written on the coloured paper which we placed on top of the Styrofoam; then we used the toothpick to make holes along the lines and curves that made our name. Those of us who were able to write our names, used the toothpicks along the letters of these. This activity especially took a long time and our teachers were really proud of our effort and perseverance. Well done!! All of these things are going into our portfolios which our teachers will show our mums and dads next week when they come to school for the Parent/Teacher conferences on Friday 20th May. We hope that all of our mums and dads have filled in a time on the Conference Roster.
We had our morning circle in the library today as we were reading books and sometimes it is fun to change our routine just a little. We sang our “Hello” song plus some of our favourites which we will be singing at our “End of year celebration” on Thursday 9th June. We sang “Love is something, I am special, Tommy Thumb, Open them shut them, Hello, The snake is in the grass and A, A, ants on my arm. Tomorrow we will sing some more songs so that we feel confident to sing without our teachers on the day. We like it when they sing with us as this helps us if we forget a word or what we have to do.
We had some time to play on the mat during the day because we did yoga soon after we arrived. This replaced our regular free play time so we added this in later on. Our teachers are encouraging us to play in small groups rather than on our own so that we can further develop skills around co-operation, consideration, caring, sharing and being in community! This seems to work best when we are playing on the carpet and using the toys of our choice.
Our music time was filled with much laughter, movements and some singing. We sometimes find it hard to co-ordinate singing and moving our bodies at the same time. We absolutely adore the freeze song and did actions to it, remembering to freeze and be as still as we could, when the music stopped; we did actions to “Feel the beat in your feet” and we were the music train. In the last action song we held on to one another’s shoulders as if we were a train and we went around the room stopping at the train stations when the music stopped. We laughed such a lot and it was the first time that the carriages stayed attached to the engine! Today’s story was called “How do you catch a star”. Ren was looking at the book which he and Shelley then read together. He asked if she would read it again and they both thought it would be a good idea to read it together with the whole class. We were amazed how it ended with the little boy’s wish really coming true. He was so patient and believed that eventually he would find a star and there it was, on the beach.
Love Shelley and Darren