Dancing, Shoe Store, and Caterpillars!

As always, it has been a very exciting week at Utopia Preschool! We have been practicing our song and dance moves for the always exhilirating dance festival. Teacher Ayla was back on Wednesday, and worked separately with the boys and then the girls. There is a part of our second dance where the boys pound their chests and say "Hee!" four times and the girls turn to the side and clap four times.

Hopefully, the hula skirts we sent home with you are coming along well! Remember if you need any help please let us know and there are parents who have volunteered to work on more than one if needed.

Here is an image of Maori women in their skirts, from a book we have in class. Notice the blacks beads on the skirts, on your child's skirt feel free to get creative and add black tape to different parts of the skirt to make a unique design.

Reminders for the Dance Festival:

*Please have your child at school by 6pm already dressed. We will open the Utopia sidegate for families to enter.

*Girls are wearing a red top and boys are wearing a black top. Everyone is wearing black shorts or leggings under their hula skirt.

*Next week we will be sending home a head band and wrist band for each child to wear.

*The show starts at 7pm!

Yet again, the hot spot of the classroom has been our amazing shoe store. Each week the children think of something to add to it and/or a new role for people to play in it.

After adding the "closed" sign last week, one of our classmates noticed that we needed a way to notify people when the shoe store was open, so he took the initiative to write "open" on our sign. Now that the children have an "open" and "closed" sign at the entrance of the shoe store the children now close the shoe store, which is usually when a teacher announces it is clean-up time, and then open the store when it is free choice time. This week, the "manager" would usually open and close the store.If a customer was spotted in the store during closed hours they were warned that if they didn't exit the shoe store immediately the employees would call the police!

New friends joined our classroom: Caterpillars!

These little critters have captivated the hearts of our Utopians! Thank you to the Girarde family for having them delivered to us this week. 2 containers filled with 30 caterpillars each arrived and so we gave most of them their own home by putting them each in their own little cup. Each child chose their own caterpillar so they can observe their caterpillar each day and notice any changes. Many of the children even named their caterpillar! Some of the names given to our new friends are: Fido, Stella, Star Wars, and Toilet. Look for updates next week on the amazing transformation of these fascinating caterpillars!

Teacher Sonja was back this week and as always, we had such a fun time!

We started the class by sitting in a big circle and followed what Teacher Sonja asked us to do. We watched her very carefully as we clapped our hands over and under one leg at a time.

Then we chose a partner and were asked to identify different body parts and put the named body part on our partners body part.

Oh and just as a reminder: Monday May 16th we will be closed for a school holiday! See you next week!