Chess

We all welcomed Jennifer back to the classroom today and all her friends came to the door to say good morning and give her lots of hugs. She settled in really quickly and got straight into playing with her friends. Allie also returned to day and came straight into the classroom and said good morning to all the teachers. Teacher Sharee brought in a wonderful alphabet train puzzle which Ava, Arata, Allie and Tokutaro pieced together and found it went all the way across the carpet and onto the floor it was so long. We also had a new chess set which was really good as all the pieces looked like real characters. The knight for example was a full horse with a knight in armor on its back, the pawns all looked like little turtles with shells on their backs too. The children instantly saw the pieces were different and soon there were six children all wanting to play together. Jessica, Noa, Sophie and Allie all used the overhead projector to trace the outlines of their favorite dinosaur onto the colored paper of their choice. It was a little difficult to stand at the side and follow the shadow’s outline with our markers because if we moved in front of the paper to draw we couldn’t see the outline at all. We also had a to be a little careful with the model on the overhead projector because if we moved it just a little bit the shadow also moved and our dinosaur picture didn’t line up properly anymore. In library time we looked again at the book ‘Dinosaur Fright’ which had some great dinosaur pictures at the front with their names too. We tried to pronounce the names but it was a little difficult with a few of them. The park was nice and warm again and we had a good time with our friends and siblings from Shelley’s class. Marc did a great drawing on the sandy floor of a dinosaur using the edge of a stone. He looked so proud of himself and soon Ava wanted to try too. When we came back to the school we sang our good morning song together and the teachers used tiny voices so we could hear how good our singing voices were without the teachers. On the carpet there were 5 big cards with the 5 vowel sounds and a picture with each one. We knew some of the vowel sounds but not all of the pictures. It was a little difficult as the first vowel had a picture of a small animal with armor on its back and we all laughed when we heard it was called an armadillo. We then sang one of our special party songs together about the 5 vowels. We stood on a taped line next to the carpet for our next activity and each had a card with either sunshine, a happy face, a gray rainy day or a love heart on it to sing our next song. We then switched to our Japanese songs and held up the special props when it was the right time. We are sorry we can’t tell you more about the secret songs as we are saving them for our end of year party together. We hope you can all attend our mother’s day breakfast tomorrow morning and look forward to seeing you there.Have a great afternoon, All our Love, Darren, Nanako and Sharee.