Mixing paints with our fingers

It was freezing cold outside, but inside our classroom, was full of heat especial from all of our energy. When we came in to Flowers classroom, our cheeks were pink and red because of the chilly air. The weather man said that it might be snowy this weekend in Tokyo. Can you believe it? We hope it will snow but at the same time we don’t want it to.

Morning activities

We did some interesting activities in the morning. We cooked Japanese New Years Soup “Ozouni” yesterday and we loved it, so we made it again but this time with play dough to show Goh-san. We also decorated cards for our January birthday friends. Our finger prints can be colorful decorations.

On the other table, we spelled our names and words with magnetic letters on white boards. On the floor, we built some towers with cork blocks.

Circle time

We did a mixing colors experiment. There were three circles on a piece of white paper just like ○＋○＝○. What is ＋? What is ＝?

Temma: Plus means zero and zero is equals?

Well, normally we use these symbols for mathematics. 1+1=2, 2+2=4, 1+2=3! Some of our friends were very good at addition. But today, we added colors instead of numbers. Hisami used her one finger to paint blue in the first circle and her other finger to paint yellow in the second circle. If we mixed these colors in the third circle…… it came out “Purple”!

Taisei: How about black and white?

William: White and maybe blue.

Taisei: Black because black is strong.

Natan: Blue because blue is strong, too.

Ethan: It can turn in black.

We looked carefully which color was coming out after mixing these two colors.

Natan: Gray! Yes, black plus white equals “Gray”.

After this experiment, Hisami introduced a “Koma” to us. A koma is a spinning top. This is one of the famous New Years games for children in Japan. She showed us the thick circle paper and drew a red circle and blue circle and stuck a toothpick in the middle.

Hisami: If I spin it, do you think we can still see the red and blue circles?

Kensei: Yes.

We were not sure, so we let her spin it and had a look.

Taise: It is colorful.

Temma: I can still see two circles.

Sarah: It is purple. Two colors mixed while it was spinning and it became kind of purple.

One of our activities was making our own spinning top and playing with it.

Activities

Shuji ( Calligraphy) Some of our friends didn’t have a chance to write “い”of いのしし yesterday, so we tried to write this in hiragana on Japanese special paper called “hanshi” with a nice brush.

Mixing colors

It was our turn to mix colors in the circle. Our fingers are not so agile, so it was not very easy to manage two colors with two different fingers and to mix them with another finger? We wiped our fingers many times to use pure colors. Some mixing was interesting, e.g. white and green, green and black, yellow and black, and so on. We made strange colors and we didn’t know what to call our creations.

Making “Koma”

We colored our own Koma with markers. Momo made a smiley face on the circle and spun it. He still could see the colors of the face, but no more smiley face on it. Sarah drew lines like pizza pieces, and made some colorful rainbow dots in each section. When she spun it, there were no more rainbow colors on it. We tried to spin harder to keep it spinning longer on the floor, but it was tricky. We needed to use our fingers with proper strength and proper direction. We can always practice at home.

Dance class

Thursday is our weekly dance day! Maryna came to us to teach a beautiful dance to us. Normally she works in the office, but every Thursday, she becomes a beautiful dance teacher. We were happy to move our body doing our old dances and some new dances. We loved the new “crab dance”. The story of this song was just like this. “A crab is crying on the sand. It is too hot and he hides in the sand. And he is swinging and swinging all around. We did the actions to this story while the music was playing. “Five little monkeys” was also a new dance, and we just loved it. This song and dance was popular when we went to robot park. We did this dance on the big rock, and we pretended that the big rock was a bed and jumped on it. The last new song was “It’s a small world” which was also lovely. Thank you for a fun dance time, Maryna!

Thank you for another lovely day, Flowers friends! We are looking forward to playing and learning with you all tomorrow!

XOXO, Flowers Class Children