Roast Beef and Pelican

We welcomed another beautiful day this morning and were happy to be able to go outside, without our jackets and enjoy playing in the park. We are trying to go earlier each day in order to maximise the space and equipment when less children are there and this is working out really well. We will go even earlier when the summer months are here in order to avoid the intense heat of the day and look forward to this time too. Downstairs we welcomed Sharee to our classroom since Shelley has to go to the university this morning. Sharee saw what we do in our classroom for the first time and it was lovely to  have her with us, while Michaela is at her Japanese school. At our activity tables we did drawing on one of our large group art projects that we started a few weeks ago and Hisami worked with some of us on our Mother’s Day cards. We sat together in the library and read “Monday is……..” It is an Eric Carle story about the different days of the week. On each day of the week an animal eats a different food. We sang songs about the days of the week and each time we read a page, we went back to remind ourselves what animals ate what food; Mika remembered Monday the porcupine at string beans. We learnt a few new words e. g. roast beef and pelican. We were a bit shocked when we saw a whole chicken in the fox’s mouth. We do not yet see food as being a part of an animal. We sat together on the carpet, first holding hands with our friends and teachers and doing actions and then we sat together and looked at cards and tried to guess what the pictures were. Then our teachers gave us some cards and we matched them. Most of us understand what matching is; when you find something that looks the same. Vincent and Elisa stood up and we looked at them carefully trying to see the similarities. Our teachers helped us by saying that they both had hair, two eyes, two hands and a nose. They were hoping that we would be able to see that Vincent is a boy and Elisa is a girl, which was a bit too abstract for us. Liam knew that once Vincent had been categorized as a boy that Elisa was a girl. We sang our “Hello” song and are trying to keep pace with everything that is happening, while the year is flying by. On the third floor we had lots of fun on the balcony space where we had a mini picnic. We clollected lots of food, plates and cups from the play kitchen and took them out on the balcony to play. We even had some strofoam packaging which we pretended was marshmellow. On the table we did some flower painting. First we looked at the flower photos we have been taking at the park and decided which colors we would like to use. We even counted how many petals they had so that we could paint the same number on our pictures. Marc wanted to play chess and so we set up the pawns and rooks on the board to play. He soon got the hang of it and wanted to keep on playing. After snack we had a special guest Rashim arrive to help as a volunteer for a few hours today. The children instantly started asking in a singing voice “What is your name”? and then Toku said “Nice to meet you” so politely it made us all smile. It was fun with the fire truck yesterday and today we had had our monthly fire and earthquake drill. We practiced covering our mouths, shouting “Fire” as loudly as we could, ducking under the tables and walking down the stairs safely together. After singing our good morning songs we asked the children if they wanted to play with some toys to which they all said “Yes”. On the carpet we then put out some toys which were unfortunately broken. We asked the children what happened to them? They told us how toys can get broken if they play with them too fast, or are not careful with them. Clodia then told us how we all needed to put the toys carefully in the boxes and not throw them. We then had to put the toys into the garbage box and they looked a little surprised. Tokutaro then offered to buy us new toys which we thanked him for.Together we did some ‘Jolly Phonics’ activity on the carpet using the magnetic letters on the magnet boards. Each of the children took turns to look at the letter we wrote on a small whiteboard and then tried to make the right sounds to go with it. We then erased the letter and they each then had to go to the magnet board to see if they could find the same letter stuck on that we had just erased. They all did really well and matched them perfectly. Great work. Love always, Shelley, Darren, Christine, Maryna, Sharee, Liezel, Ayakam, Hisami, Goh and Nanako