Happy birthday Noa chan

Our new week is in full swing and in our classroom downstairs, we are in the process of making a horse. Since it is the Year of the Horse (the blue wooden horse), we thought that it would be a good idea to make a 3D horse out of junk art. We have the body, the neck, four legs and a head. Today we finished making the legs by tearing black paper and pasting it onto two tissue boxes which we joined together last week. We covered the legs and the body with soft laminate as all of the paint was coming off so now our horse’s skin is shiny and polished. When we were sitting on the mat for circle time, we had the body with a neck, four separate legs and an oval shaped black thing. Our teachers asked us if the horse can gallop and we all said: “No”. Zachary told us that it needed legs. We looked at our legs and counted two legs and then we realised that a horse has more than two legs. It has four. We looked at all of the parts that were on the floor and were not able to work out which one was the head. We knew that the four long ones would become legs though. So we chatted further and Adrien chose the oval shape for the head. The head is made out of squished paper which we recycled. At one of the tables, we did some cutting on lines and started making a mane. Hisami taught us how to curl paper; by putting a marker on the paper and rolling the paper over the marker a few times. We are not sure if horses have curled manes but ours will have  slight curl.

All the parts of our horse are attached to one another. Its hooves are made from yoghurt and dessert cups and its neck is a long cardboard tube.

 When Maryna san came into our classroom from the office, we asked her what does she think our box is going to be and she wasn’t really sure. When she came back later and saw some of the parts attached to the body, we asked her again and she said: “It has a really long neck!” We think she thinks that it is a giraffe that we are making! Oh, no! We read books together in the library and then had another morning circle together on the mat. This time, we sang our “good morning” song to one another and we did many actions. We also looked at gold and silver cupcake holders and learnt the names of the colours. Later on we went to one of the activity tables, and we squashed the cupcake holders into a circle shape. We pushed them flat. We will use them for an activity later in the week. We also did a group art work using markers and crayons which we will work more on tomorrow. We are concentrating on shapes and this art work will focus on circles which are round. Upstairs, we tried out some watercolour painting at the one activity table. Ava, Beckett, Allie, Clodia and Jennifer all mixed the colours together themselves and they changed the water when it was necessary. Clodia painted a circus, Allie painted clouds, Beckett painted an alien house on Mars, Ava painted cars driving on the road and Jennifer painted a house. Some of our friends showed us all of the things that they made for New Year and we took some photos of each other. In the photos you can see how proud they are all with the things that they had made.

At the park, we continued learning how to use the camera and we took some photos of our friends and the equipment. We had a fabulous celebration for Noa’s birthday which was in December. Noa chose a book titled “I like me” which we all read together. We learnt that the most important person in our lives to love, is ourselves. We are all special and have different things that we can do and of course we have things that we cannot do. All these parts of us, are things to treasure and value. We sang “If you’re happy and you know it” and many of us had ideas for actions to do with the song. Jennifer presented Noa with her sparkly crown that we had made for her and she also got many hugs from her friends in the class. Beckett gave her the gift of hearts on a string which we made for her. We shared cupcakes and popcorn and had a great time with Noa. Tomorrow we have another belated birthday celebration.

Love Shelley, Darren, Hisami, Ayaka, Liezel, Nanako, Goh, Christine and Maryna