Happy birthday Alexander, Wiley and Luka

Today was different for many reasons in our classroom. We missed Liezel who sent a message on Facebook as she left to go to the airport and we all realised what an amazing team of teachers we have in our class. We hope that we show them that we really love and appreciate everything that they do for us and we hope that they know this too.

We started off our day, making people out of the lids of plastic bottles and sat with Hisami and Shelley as they guided us through the process. Darren had drilled holes in the lids for us and there was a particular way that   we needed to thread everything. First we made the legs and the feet; then the bodies and heads and then the arms and hands. Last but not least we added wiggly eyes to the lid that represented the head and bravo…..our wiggly people were done. We counted the lids as we threaded them and those of us who made snakes yesterday, had good practice, so we knew what to do today.

Those of us who needed to complete our masks added some colourful feathers to them and once again, we were not so keen to wear them. We were very happy to take them home with us and look at our teachers holding them up to their faces. We had a fabulous selection of puzzles in specific colours with the words written underneath the pictures and shapes. We had red, blue, yellow, orange, green, purple, black, brown and white.

Once we had completed all of our activities, we went to the carpet and got ready for the birthday party. Today we celebrated Alexander’s third birthday which was on Sunday; Luka’s third birthday which is next week towards the end of June and Wiley’s second birthday which will be in July. It was lovely to welcome their mums, Nanako, Michaelan and Sara as well as Tommy who is Alexander’s dad. We spoke about the feelings that we all have when it is a birthday and we said that we felt happy. So we all stood up and sang together

“When you’re happy and you know it”. We selected the different things that we could do which were jump, shout happy birthday, whisper happy birthday, shrug our shoulders, turn around (one of our teachers said this one) and bend our knees. Then we sat down on the carpet and asked Wiley, Alexander and Luka separately “How old are you now”. They all told us how old they are and are

going to be and then we realised that we hadn’t given them their crowns. So Wiley chose Vincent to give her, her crown; Luka chose Hana and Alexander chose Zachary. We counted in English, Spanish, French and German and then we added their ages together and the sum total was eight. We held up one hand with five fingers and sang “Five little candles” and then it was time to light the candles. Nanako had made a beautiful heart shaped cake which had three candles on it. One candle for each of the children who were celebrating their birthday. We counted in Japanese and they blew and they blew and ……

We lit the candles one more time so that mums and dads could get a photograph. Then three of us gave them their gifts and they opened them. They each received a long heart chain filled with beautiful hearts and messages from our teachers and friends.

We want to thank Sara, Micaelan and Nanako for bringing us fabulous treats for snack time. We had cupcakes, pop corn, blue berries, yoghurt and osenbe. If our teachers had let us, we would have eaten everything up but they didn’t want us to feel like the “Very hungry caterpillar” after he had eaten so many things on Saturday.

Well, you won’t believe us, but when we came back from the park, we prepared ourselves for lunch time and then at the end of lunch time, we had another party. This party was not such a happy one because it was a “Sayonara” party for Tomas. He is leaving Japan on the weekend and will go and live in the Netherlands. We were so sad and we tried our best to smile and be happy. We hugged him and we said that we love him very much and will miss him soooooo much. We gave him a card which looked like a book, filled with photos of all of us and we think that he liked it and will keep it close to his heart. We gave his mum a box with a special Japanese doll inside, filled with messages from our families and our teachers.

We are always sad to say goodbye to our friends when they leave and we are grateful for all that we shared during the time that we shared our lives together at Ohana. Sayonara Tomas; Sayonara Ana and Sayonara to your whole family. Please keep in touch with us and send pictures from your new school in the Netherlands.

It was a busy, celebratory, fun, creative, emotional day for many of us.

Love always Shelley, Hisami, Goh and Sayaka