A Great Day For Making Friends
We met a new friend today at Lighthouse and invited them to come with us to the
park. John said that we will go to two parks today.Our favorite park was the one we call
"the small one" (Roppongi Nishi Park), and we went their first.
Free Play
There were some puzzles set up on thee floor, but Ellie wanted to play with the
number boxes that you cans tack up to become a tower. She and Ayame took turns
building it up as a tower and knocking it down. They requested for the "house" again,
and they took the pillows from the reading corner and put them inside their house.
They put the orange cushions and put them beside. Playing "house" has been their
favorite.
John- John then asked us if we can draw, and he gave us big sheets of paper.
"This is a princess and this is a castle!" she said. "And Ellie make lots of dress!"
"I make a lot of dress," Ellie said. "It's for..... you!" she told Pauline. "And this is
towels, lots of towels," she added. John then asked them to paint their drawings.
"Let's put on some smocks," John said.
"Snacks? I have some snacks!" Ellie said.
"No, I meant smocks- art smocks like these!" John said, holding them up and Ellie
giggled.
Circle Time
We started circle time with some music and movement activities. John played the
guitar and did some actions according to the tempo of his strumming: running, walking,
jumping, crawling, and skipping. Then, he read us a book called "The Lorax" by Dr.
Seuss. it told the story of how the Once- ler cut down the beautiful Truffula trees just
to make a kind of garment they called Thneeds.
"Do you think it's okay that they cut down the trees?" John asked.
"No! Because it's not fruit," Ayame said.
"What happened to the land?" John asked.
"Sad land!" Ellie and Ayame both replied. We thought about the beautiful trees we
always see at the park and wondered how someone could cut them down. We
remembered one day, during their Tales from A to Z class (Phonics class), they were
talking about how the ax was used to count down trees and turn them into chairs and
tables.
"No more trees?" Ayame asked.
"We need to plant new tree then water," Ellie said, making a motion of holding a
watering can and using it to water the plants.
"then tree can grow, grow, grow!"Ayame said. They were right- for every tree that
gets cut down, a new tree should be planted in its place. Pauline said that trees help us
a lot and they make the air cleaner, and they are a home to a lot of animals.
Park Time
As we were preparing to go to the park, we met a new friend! He came to Lighthouse
with his mommy. Together, we walked towards the small park. There, we saw friends
from another school playing! We also collected some acorns and put them in the
plastic bag Pauline had brought. Then we headed to the big park (Hinokicho Park).
"Look! They have this," Ellie said, pointing to the orange barricade surrounding the
jungle gym. "Before, it's not here," she said. Pauline read the sign, and it said, "Grass
growing period."
We played on the slides with our new friend- lo, and behold. We met another new
friend! Not just one, but two! They were brothers, and they were with their mommy.
They heard John playing the ukulele, so they wanted to come to play with us, too! We
played with them on the slides. The girls dragged Pauline and coaxed her to slide down
with them.
"This slide is bumpy," Ellie commented.
"She's my new Ellie," Our new friend E said. "I have an old Ellie in my school."
"Pauline, come! You go down here. Come, come!" Ayame encouraged Pauline, who
seemed nervous, to slide down.
"I'm too big for the slide," she said.
"Well, me, too!" E said. "But I think I can do it!" The four of them slid down, and
everyone erupted in a chorus of "Wheeeee!!!!"
John asked E if he could play his favorite song, "Wheels on the Bus", and he did, so
we all sang with him. Little by little, friends with their parents started coming over and
watching what we were doing. We met two more new friends who were also with their
mommy.
E called Pauline and Ellie over and said, "I have to show you something!" He led us
to a place with giant nets and hammocks! Ayame came over along with E's brother and
John. John worked his ukulele magic, and we sang and played with him, so more friends
with their parents came over! Wow! What a great day- we made lots of new friends! As
we went back to school, We made yet another friend that made Ayame stop in her
tracks!
"Look! Look!" she said excitedly and pointed to the ground. Wow! it was a beautiful,
bright green caterpillar! It was so cute!
"My mommy have caterpillar allergy," Ellie commented.
"I'm walk like this, then I look down and I see it!" Ayame demonstrated how she saw
our caterpillar friend.
Afterschool Session: Young Einsteins (Numeracy and Science Class)
To start of the class, Pauline taught a new song for Halloween. It was called
"Skeleton Dance" and she taught us the dance steps. Then we reviewed our numbers
and then Pauline said we could play a board game. It involved some cute unicorns and
pink diamonds! Oh, if you could just imagine how excited we were about the pink
diamonds. There was a blue cloud dice that we rolled. Depending on how many clouds
show up on the dice, that's how many clouds our unicorns jump. If we jump on a pink
cloud, then we get a pink diamond. The person who has the most diamonds at the end
of the game wins!
It was quite funny what happened when we played the game- Pauline and John
kept landing on a cloud with a cupcake (which means they miss a turn), and Ellie and
Ayame were neck- and- neck for first place. When we were finished, everybody had a
turn counting their diamonds, then we chose which magnetic number matched. Ellie
counted eleven, so she put number 11; Ayame counted nine, so she put number 9. They
also helped count for John and Pauline and put number 8 and 4, respectively. The
ending? Ellie was declared winner number one, and Ayame was winner number two.
Hooray!
That ends Day 4 of Fall School. How about you? How was your day?
Love,
All the friendly Lighthouse children
