Feeling good about myself

Today we really didn’t need any jackets when we went to the park. And in fact, it was warmer when we first went outside to play, than when we returned to school. We had a great time filling bottles up with water and today was a little magical for us. Shelley helped us dig two holes in the sandbox one of which, we kept on filling with water. The second one was just standing there and she asked us if she should make a tunnel which of course we wanted her to do. In no time the two holes were connected and water was flowing from the one into the other. It was such fun. We could even pass things through the tunnel to one another…….only small things that could fit through. You can see from the photos how curious we were and what fun it was! We kept on filling the bottles up with water as the water was disappearing. Ren said that it was going underneath the sand. Our teachers don’t give us the answers to everything that we ask them; they like to ask us questions after we have asked them questions. They like us to try to find out the answers by ourselves. This morning we changed our routine a little as we chose to come to work at the tables as soon as we arrived. We noticed that there were different colours of tape on the table with pairs of scissors for each of us plus one large piece of paper to work on. We pulled many different colours of tape, cut them and pasted them on to the paper. This was a great exercise to strengthen our fingers and teach us how to co-ordinate pulling the tape with cutting it. For some of us it was a little tricky as we had to also put the scissors down, in order to paste the tape on the paper. Ren made a tower on his page and he commented on the size of the pieces that he cut; which one was longer or shorter etc. These pictures are in our portfolios which we will take home at the end of the year.

There were other activities for us to do if we hadn’t done them before. Ren drew a picture for Darren’s birthday book and he also made a Mother’s Day placemat. Nico made a birthday drawing too and all of us sat together, looking and learning from one another. Nico also traced his name using tracing paper and he tried to draw the letters of his name on another piece of paper. Shelley always says that whatever we do is fine as long as we are trying our best.

With this theme in mind and our theme for the month which is “I can” the story for today was “When I feel good about myself”. We are learning how important it is to trust ourselves and not compare who we are with someone else. We are all good at some things and can teach others and at the same time, learn from those who are better at the things that we are not so good at. At the end of the story we looked at another book called “Letters to Felix”. Felix the rabbit goes all around the world, and wherever he goes, he writes a letter to his friends. We looked carefully at the inside front and back covers and noticed that they were exactly the same. Felix writes on paper, puts the letter into an envelope, adds a stamp on the outside with the address and mails it in a mailbox. We remember mailing postcards when it was New Year.

We can all sit and face one another; we can all cross our legs; we can all put our hands on our knees; we can all open and close our eyes; we can all wink and blink our eyes; we can all pop our lips etc. Each time we did something, we said: “I can……………………” and of course we can all do yoga. In our yoga class today we did eight postures. We did the “do nothing doll; bridge; table; cat; cobra; shark; tree and mouse. In this photo we are all doing the cobra and looked just like snakes. We love singing our song “The snake is in the grass” to remind us that a snake starts with a ‘s’ sound……ssssssssssssssssss!

At the end of the day, when Nico was resting downstairs, those of us who stayed upstairs made letters using yarn. We pasted them over an actual letter and today’s letters were “i, p and n”.

Love Shelley and Darren