Explore the World!

It was rainy day that we could see a lot of raindrops from the sky. Yet, we knew we were going to have another wonderful day with our friends and special guests today!

There were two art activities on the table. One of the art tables, we continued our canvas art. This time, John helped friends to do finger paint with purple. The other table, Chiaki kindly offered pom-poms and made red dots on a blank rectangle paper. We also enjoyed playing with cars and blocks on the carpet area. The big fire truck was one of the popular toys to play with. Many friends gathered there and put some blocks in the fire truck.

After the free play time, we gathered at the carpet area to celebrated Chinese New Year. Goh-san taught us some New Year greetings in Cantonese and Mandarin. “Gong hei fat choy (恭喜發財 )” is the common Cantonese way to greet people and in Mandarin, we say “xīn nián kuài lè (新年快樂 )”. Goh-san also brought some traditional Chinese New Year foods for us, such as Chinese New Year cake, chong-zi (steamed rice dumpling wrapped with banana leaf) and tang (fermented apricot candy) .

Next, Ky (Ri’s mom) and Har (Ak’s mom) came to our classroom for Japanese international month. This time, they introduced us about Setsubun. Setsubun is the one of the traditional events which hold every February 3rd. Ky read picture-story show about Setsubun. In the picture story show, it says that Oni (ogre) comes to house on Setsubun day and we keep away from Oni by hanging out fish because Oni does not like bad smell, put Holly leaf at the garden to sting their eyes and throw dried soy beans to Oni since they really do not like them. When we looked around after the picture story show, we realized there were some Oni in the classroom!!!! Har gave us the dried soy beans and we threw them as much as we could to Oni. Thanks to our brave friends, the Oni left our classroom. Since we felt happy and proud ourselves, Har and Ky suggested us to sing and dance Oni no Pants song. We really liked the music and dance motions so that we listened the song again and again until we got hungry. Before having our morning snack, Haruka said she brought Setsubun Sushi roll for us. We could not wait to eat the Setsubun Sushi roll so we tried to find our seat quickly and enjoyed eating the Setsubun Sushi roll and morning snack.

During story time, somebody came to our classroom. It was Ad’s grandma (savta) from Israel. She came to our classroom to read special book for us. The title of the book is called “A Sick Day for Amos Mc Gee” written by Philp C. Stead. It was fun to not only listening to the story but also pictures because there were a lot of animals in the book, for example, elephant, penguins and owls. After that, Savta song Hebrew good bye song called Shalom A leichem and John played the guitar.

Since it was still rainy outside, we stayed at the classroom and played with blocks and had small circle time about how we can play blocks nicely. We discussed what we can tell if we accidentally break the objects with blocks. Friends and John said if that happens, we can say “Sorry, Can I help fix it for you?” to show apologized kindness.

Before we knew it, it was time for us to go home. We had such a fun and busy day. We want to say thank you to Adam’s Savta, Har, and Ky for taking the time to come to Buds class to share with us, a very special moment together. Hopefully the weather will clear up soon and the sun come shining down on us tomorrow!

Love,

The Brave little Soybean Warriors of Buds 2019