Lets Celebrate Purim

 We had a fun filled day today with our friends and teachers today even though the weather was a little drizzly this morning. Today was a special day for all of us as we had a special guest (Blue and Wiley’s grandmother Terri from Texas) who came to both classes to be with Wiley and Blue, thank you and welcome to Ohana. We also celebrated a special Jewish festival today called ‘Purim’. In Shelley's class we made a special get well card each for Taiyo who has been away sick. We were able to choose the color of the card we wanted and then used markers and stickers to decorate them. Each card also has our photo on the front too. Also on the tables we put together our own South African flag from the cut pieces. We used lots of colors and shapes and glued them onto the paper. It was great fun trying to fit the black triangle with the yellow ‘V’ shape and the green ‘Y’ shape. Liam shared one of his favorite books with us today too ‘Chika, Chika, Boom, Boom’ which we loved. Thank you Liam. In circle time Hisami taught us some Japanese songs including ‘Hige Ji San’, ‘Okii na kuri no hino shita de’ and ‘Gu choki pa de’ which we all love and some of us can even sing along to now. In the morning in Darren’s class Beckett, Blue, Clodia, Allie and Ava all saw the soft puppet castle theater set up on the table along with the finger puppets. They also decided to use the plastic figures as well with the theater. They did really well playing together and it was funny to hear them talking about King George, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Beckett explained how the king was siuck and that his head hurt so called for the doctor. Blue then found the doctor figure who told him to go to a warm place where he would feel better. On the table Adrien, Yossi and Tirza completed their styrofoam castles by adding some wooden pieces, some recycled glue tops and beautiful triangular flags on poles. Jennifer, Momo and Allie collected all the cardboard boxes together and built a doorway to the cardboard castle surrounding the library area. Together they piled them up to carry and watched as Allie again managed to carry so many of them they were piled above her head. We were so happy to join all our friends, brothers and sisters in Shelley’s class to celebrate the Jewish festival of ‘Purim’. We all sat so nicely together and saw that Yossi and Tirza were dressed up for the occasion. Yossi was dressed in a ‘Lightning McQueen Cars’ costume and Tirza was dressed as ‘Spongebob square pants’. Shelley then told us the story of King Achashverosqueen and how he lived all alone in the castle and was looking for a bride. He looked all around but wasn’t happy with the ladies he met. He eventually found a bride but there was a ‘bad guy’ named Haman who wore a triangular hat. We all sang along to the song in Hebrew with some great actions showing how the bad guy Haman had the triangular hat and how after he left the people all celebrated with a big fancy dress party, swung rattles to drown out Haman’s name and had lots of party food and drinks too. Yossi and Tirza’s mum brought along some delicious snacks called oznay haman for us to eat. We loved them, they were so yummy. Thank you Chana.  We read the book ‘Cinderella’ together today as it has the handsome Prince who was also looking for a bride. Many of the girls said they wanted to be princesses and so Blue, Tokutaro and Yossi all took the Ruby Red slipper just like in Cinderella and tried it on all the girls feet in the class. Unfortunately the slipper was too big, but there was one more girl in the class; Ayaka. When Yossi tried it on Ayaka it was a perfect fit. We went to the multi puropse room on the ground floor for some exercise and used the climbing wall, the ball pool, the lego and the rotating tummy floor machine. Ava and Momo climbed all the way to the top of the waal without any help. When we got back to the classroom we took a quick look at our group styrofoam castle and saw that we will need a hill and a moat for the model to go on. Using some newspaper we made lots of balls which we can cover to make the hill for our castle. King Darren then went into the big library castle and we stood on the edge of the moat and threw our newspaper into the castle as we wanted to come in. We collected all the pieces together in a big bag to use tomorrow morning. Wishing you all a wonderful afternoon and we all look forward to seeing you at the charity wine tasting event tomorrow night. Love always, Darren, Shelley, Hisami, Ayaka, Liezel, Nanako, Goh, Christine, Maryna, Sharee and Rama