Last day before Golden Week/How to make Spring Easter Nests
April 30th, 2019
Today is the last day of this week and we had such a fun time playing and learning and working and creating with our friends and teachers. We had a small class be-cause many of our friends are already on holiday. In fact Ava left this morning for Cambodia, and Shelley, Kai and Sarah will go tomorrow morning on the same airplane. We are so excited to learn about Cambodia and what they saw there at Ohana Learning Tree.
Talking about Cambodia, we went through our original Cambodia story and read the parts that we will be saying at our Graduation party. We are eager to try to memorise the words so that we can say them proudly on the day. When we return to school, we will continue to learn the words and in fact, we will use the illustrations in our book as the guide. When we see the pictures, we will know what to say.
Hisami told us about Kodomo no hi, which is the holiday that children celebrate on 5th May every year. It is called “Children’s Day” but it really has a focus on boys. We made a special kind of hat called a “kabuto” which we folded using newspaper. The “kabuto” is like a helmet worn by the Japanese soldiers who fought in the war long ago. We used the newspaper in the same way that we would use origami paper. She told us that there is a special food that people eat on “Kodomo no hi” which is a kind of mochi with anko (sweet bean paste) inside. Momo: Maybe it’s kind of mochi.
Early in the morning, at one of our tables we played a fabulous Lego board game which took a long time to complete. Each of us have a card and a counter which we place on the board with many Lego pieces. Each card has pictures of Lego pieces on it with a four step plan. The goal is to collect all of the pieces and as-semble them as per the plan on our card. There is a dice which we throw and we move our counter along the edge of the board, until we have collected all of the pieces. It is so much fun.
At another table, we completed puzzles and then started a new 300 piece one which is very difficult. Kai continued to take photos of us for Graduation Day which is still a secret. Some of us changed our mind about the photo but…………………………….shhhhhh! Sorry it is still a big secret! Do you remember that Ai chan made an eating man/eating monster out of origami yesterday? Well today we sat with her and learnt how to make it and made our own. Shelley and Hisami showed us what they put on their eating monsters/men when they were little and played the same game. Shelley added pictures of colours and shapes, numbers and some stickers. Hisami added numbers and words. We loved playing with their eating men/eating monsters and of course we had fun playing with our own.
Emilie had her TEACH ME NOW, TEACH ME NOW, today was Emilie’s TEACH ME NOW. It was a secret until she took her explanation sheet out of the bag. None of us knew what she was going to teach us about. She tried to give us a clue and when she said “It is something chocolate”, Natan said: “We don’t eat chocolate at school”. She said that some-times we do have it as a treat!
So this is how you make Spring Easter Eggs:
1. We need chocolate
2. Syrup
3. Butter
4. Cornflakes
You first break the chocolate and melt it with syrup, and butter. Be careful because it is HOT!
Then you add the cornflakes and mix them. You put the mixture into a cupcake and add three chocolate Easter eggs. When I showed my friends, they had big smiles on their faces and they asked me these questions:
Momo: Why did you make them?
Emilie: Because I like to make it
Alona: Why did you bring it here?
Emilie: I want to share it with my friends
Sarah: When did you make it?
Emilie: Yesterday night
Natan: Are you going to make it again?
Emilie: Yes on Easter Day
Then we reviewed what you need to make them and all my friends remembered.
After lunch Emilie was the waitress and served us Spring Easter Nests for desert. Yummmmm! She first told us that we need to eat 100% of our lunch before she can give us the desert but our teachers said, that it was okay not to eat everything of our lunches; especially since we made toast. She even took two upstairs for Maryna and Gaelle as she knows that they love chocolate.
Let us explain about the toast activity. Since we were not going to go outside due to the rainy weather, our teachers thought about something that we could do, as a treat, since we would be inside the whole day. So, how about cooking; especially since most of our TEACH ME NOW presentations have been like cooking shows! So we made toast using a toaster and we spread strawberry jam or mayonnaise sauce on the bread. Some of us even combined the two as a spread. We all loved the toast and ate our snack as well as the toast. That is why some of us were unable to eat all of our lunch. Thanks Emilie for your understanding and for giving us the yummy Spring Easter Nests for desert. They were delicious.
We played an energetic game called “Freeze”. Kai played rhythms on the drum and when he stopped we had to freeze or stand still like a statue.
We hope that our friends who were sick today will be better soon and look forward to hearing about everyone’s Golden Week adventures, when we return to school on Tuesday 7th May. Happy “Kodomo no hi” and Happy Golden Week.
OXOXOXOXOXOX all the children and teachers in Flowers Class.
We forgot to tell you that some furniture in our classroom has been moved and there is a lovely pink curtain hanging down as an entrance for us, to get into the room!