Oshiruko

January 24th Oshiruko

In continuance with the New Year’s celebration, today, we made a special dish with sticky rice ball (“shiratama”) and red bean soup called “oshiruko.” Together we ate the strawberries that we got from M’s mommy.

This morning as soon as we finished our morning jobs, we looked around the classroom to decide what to do. Some of us went to the carpet area with the blocks and to the kitchen area to make ourselves busy building things and cooking with our friends. At one table, John called our names to work on our big map. We added a house and we could choose between a milk carton and a tissue roll. At another table, Nanako helped us mix the shiratama flour with water. We then ‘tried’ to take a small piece and roll it in to a small ball. Being sticky we didn’t want to have any choking accidents but once we started touching, it waS hard to resist taking a big chunk and making it in to a snake or squashing it flat like a pancake.

Soon it was Maryna’s ballet class and the teachers were amazed to see how we used our good listening ears making a nice big circle by ourselves and kept moving our bodies along John’s singing without any teacher having to attend with us while the teachers were busy getting the room ready! Once she was here we were so busy dancing! Sometimes we enjoy learning the ballet terms like releve, saute and pirouette and trying to get the moves right, and sometimes we like the silly moves like today we lied on our backs and tried cutting with our legs crossing until our feet touched the floor.

For circle time, we counted from one to ten in Japa- nese using “daizu” and here is the conversation we had:

Nanako: Do you know what we can make out of soy beans?

We can make a lot of things. We can make soy sauce...

Chiaki and R: I like soy sauce! N: We can make soy milk... Hannah: I like soy milk!

N: We can also make natto.

Nimo and T: I like natto!

We also played a game called, “Ushiro no shomen dare?” We make a circle and someone has to be in the middle with the eyes covered. Then everyone making the circle walk around singing the song that goes:

Kagome Kagome, Kago no naka no tori wa Itsu itsu deyaru Yoake no ban ni Tsuru to kame ga subbeta Ushiro no shomen dare?

When the song stops, whoever stands behind the person in the middle will call her/his name and she/he has to guess who is the one. It felt a bit scary to be the only one in the middle so it was nice to have Chiaki to keep us compa- ny. Later when we went for a walk after snack time to the temple, we saw a big tree standing in the middle. We played the game again and Nimo guessed who was behind him. He was having a hard time guessing we a lot of other friends calling out at the same time...

Thank you for another fun day! Love from the playful Buds.