Ohana Taiko Workshop
We were surprised at what we saw when we entered the classroom this morning. Our teachers set up a large table and laid out all kinds of junk. We knew what the activity was since we talked about junk art with Liezel yesterday, but we were a bit surprised at all the new junk that was out for use. We had circuit boards, chips, boxes, spools of yarn, tape, and a whole lot others! Some of us continued with our project from yesterday and some of us had new ideas so we started anew. By the end of our morning craft time, we have made such a big mess that we actually didn’t have time to clean up! We put everything in a box for the time being and headed to the park before it started to rain. We planned to clean everything up once we got back from the park.
We played our usual games with our usual friends at our usual place. Luckily for us it didn’t rain so we enjoyed the park to the fullest. We headed back to school to quickly pack away our mess we made this morning and then eat our snacks. We had to be quick because we had a special guest joining us today. We quickly ate our snacks and Moko-sensei arrived just in time! Our teachers helped Moko sensei set up the taiko drums and in no time our classroom turned into a taiko studio! We split up into two groups, one group stayed with Moko-sensei for 15 minutes of taiko fun, and the second group were handed a sheet of paper and we were asked to sketch what we saw.
We tied our hachimaki on our heads and we were all handed a pair of sticks. Without any delay, Moko-sensei taught us some simple beats that we played along with. Moko-sensei made learning the taiko beats easy by using sounds to guide us where we needed to hit. “Don” is the sound when the stick hits the middle of the drum and “ka” is the sound the taiko makes when we hit the edge. Moko-sensei would say something like, “Don Don Ka Ka”, and we knew exactly what we needed to do. We mixed in a picnic dance, and lots of “YAAAA!!!” to make our taiko experience much more exciting! It was a wonderful feeling banging away at the taiko drums and shouting in the classroom!
Each group had 15 minutes of taiko fun and we shouted, “Thank you Moko-sensei!” to show our gratitude for the wonderful experience! We gathered into a circle and Tiger read our question of the day. “Do you know what Moko-sensei teaches?”, after watching Moko in action all of us were very sure what teacher she is. Everyone loved Moko-sensei’s taiko workshop so much that K, Ka, A, and Y said loudly, “I want to do one more time!”. We hope we can do taiko all together instead of breaking up into groups next time! We talked very briefly about Moko being a taiko teacher, then Nimo asked us, “Do you think I’m a taiko teacher?”. In unison everyone said, “No!”, Nimo then admitted that he definitely can’t teach taiko like Moko-sensei. Then he asked, “Are teachers good at everything?”, once again we all said, “no!”. We talked about how there are things we are very good at and at the same time there are lots of things we are still working on. Nimo told us he isn’t very good at drawing, but every time he draws it’s always his best. It doesn’t look anything like Picasso, Da Vinci, or Keith Herring’s art, but it is still Nimo’s best. Our teachers reminded us that everyone have different levels of expertise, and everyone sees things differently. And that’s ok, because we are all different, but we do need to be careful of the words we choose when we decide to comment.
Can’t believe it’s already Thursday, which mean it’s already Friday tomorrow! Where does the time go?!
Rest well and stay warm everyone! See you all again tomorrow!
Love,
Flowers