The Kings of Flowers
Bonjour! Today, Gaelle (A’s mom) took us to France. She taught us about this fabulous January tradition in France; people eat an almond pastry called Galette des Rois (King Cake) when visiting your friend. The youngest of the family member will go under the table and call out the name one by one to choose who will get the next slice of galette. When everyone has a slice, you eat together to find out who has the feve (small porcelain figurine) hidden inside your galette. Gaelle explained that originally the feve represented the nativity characters from the crib but today, “you can also find Minions and other little things!” This week in Flowers we have been talking about the bees with Shelley, Rafflesia about Vieda and planting with Kai. We have been learning about the wonders of nature; how all the living creatures have a purpose on the Earth. Today, we asked ourselves: what is our purpose in this world?
While we waited for Gaelle to come, we played a lot of finger songs. Do you know why? Well, this morning, some of our friends were making a snake from yarn using a handmade yarning kit. Apparently, there are many doctors who cannot become a surgeon these days not because they didn’t study enough but because they have not acquired enough finger coordination. Knitting requires a lot of finger movements and most of all patience! It was indeed very challenging to even make less than a centimeter long snake! We sang our favorite songs “Open and Shut Them” and “One Little Finger.” We also played a finger dance along The Nutcracker song Mr. Thumbkin touching Pointer, Mr. Thumbkin touching Middleman, Mr. Thumbkin touching Ringman and Mr. Thumbkin touching baby.
FRANCE DAY
Gaelle: Today I’m talking about Fance.
B: I’ve been to France before in a big castle.
Gaelle presented three things comparing that of France and Japan...
Comparison 1: Tokyo Tower & Eiffel Tower
W: Tokyo Tower is bigger.
R: (Pointing at Eiffel Tower) There’s elevator and stairs.
Gaelle: How old do you think Eiffel Tower is?
A: A million.
K: 20 and 20.
W: 100 years old.
Comparison 2: Shinkansen VS TGV
B: I don’t like shinkansen. I like Star Wars.
Gaelle: TGV is an abbreviation for high speed train but unlike shinkansen, it doesn’t have its own track so it cannot go as fast as shinkansen.
Comparison 3: Sushi VS Snail
Gaelle: When I came to Japan, people asked me to eat raw fish and at first you think EEK because you are not used to eating some food but now I like sushi and it’s the same with snails. Ummm….yum :9
Q & A
W: How did the snail come out the water?
Gaelle: The snails are not from the water. In fact because people in France like to eat snails, there are snail farms.
S: Why do you have snail farm?
Gaelle: To grow snails.
K: What is this (pointing to the special fork in the picture)?
Gaelle: It’s thin and pointy so you can pull out the snail.
Before we could taste the galette and find the five Kings of flowers, Gaelle taught us the French version of duck-duck-goose along the song “La galette au four” which goes like this…“Je porte porte ma galette au four.”
How we wanted to run! But of course, we have to use our gentle feet inside the classroom, so we tried fast walking...We all had a chance to drop the handkerchief and when it was R’s turn, he fast walked covering his face with the handkerchief and we think he really enjoyed playing the game together.
Coming back from park, we had a quiz about beez...We were given two choices and for each question, we only had one chance to raise our hands up. You can see the number of friends who raised their hands next to each answers. We will not tell the right answers here, instead we will test our mommies and daddies...
Question 1: Why do the bees do the waggle dance?
A) To tell the other bees where the flowers are. (12 friends)
B) To fight and scare away other bees. (2 friends)
Question 2: How many legs do bees have?
A) Eight legs. (6 friends)
B) Six legs. (7 friends)
Question 3: Honey is made from pollen?
A) True. (13 friends)
B) Not True. (2 friends)
A found a friend, Mr. worm at the park today while digging up the soil before planting our flowers next week. We had brought this friend back to the classroom to talk about his job. As R explained, “they make the grounds softer” and we also talked that worms eat leaf, dead flower or dead animals, in fact anything in the soil and make the soil richer, stronger and healthier. We learned a big word, worms are a kind of FERTILIZER! Next we looked at a picture of a squirrel collecting acorns. We tried to figure out what the squirrels job is. E said, “taberuno (squirrels eat the acorns)” and Z said, “They will keep it and eat it later.” We pretended to be squirrels and dug a hole on the ground to hide the acorns then we dug again to find them...Just then, A asked a fantastic question, “What if you forget where you hide it?” Yes, so by forgetting the hiding spot, the squirrels are helping grow new trees! So bees feed from flowers while helping flowers pollinate, worms eat the soil while helping fertilize the soil, squirrels collect nuts while helping new trees to grow...so what do you think we do? We divided our big group into three and we each shared great ideas…
K: We share a lot of toy. We don’t put garbage.
Y: We help the earth. We recycle the garbage.
E: We clean the garbage
E: You don’t throw rubbish on the floor.
K: There are many living things and we save the earth in our heads (to pick up garbage from the ocean and beach to put in the garbage truck).
R: We didn’t throw trash in the earth.
E: We don’t dig everywhere. Only on the sandbox.
A: We go to the spaceship and become astronauts. If we have plastic at home, we put in the garbage and then place it in the planet. And then the fish can go in the water and then the earth will be happy.
W: We can have a grabber for grabbing the trash out of the ocean. And then we take it back to Ohana. Then let’s give it to the garbage truck and ask them to recycle the garbage.
S: If you didn’t pick up the garbage then the animals will eat it and then the animals will die. Then we need to go to the animal hospital.
A: We plant lots of trees and make sure they don’t die because we water it.
Z: We grow trees. We put seeds inside and it grows.
E: We help the animals. Give them food like help them water and take care of them.
B: We help the Earth. Like helping stuff grow like build stuff like building flowers.
K: I going to swimming and I’m going to take the garbage.
E: Picking the garbage when there is garbage on the street.
Thank you for another lovely day!
Love from the Flowers children xoxo