Irish Day!

Did you know that Nanako is a teacher in Buds and she is also a mommy for N in Petals and U in Flowers.  Nanako is Japanese but Una and Noah’s daddy is actually from Ireland.  Together with Nanako, we had a GREEN featured day and learned about Ireland :)  Here is what we did...

 Morning Activities

 Shamrock Art

Shamrock (meaning “young clover” in Irish) is used as a symbol in Ireland, the so called Emerald Isle.  Ireland is famous for the green rich landscape and the color green is commonly used to celebrate St. Patrick’s day on March 17th all around the world. 

For this activity, two sheets of tin foil was rolled over the table.  We dabbed spoonful of blue, yellow and green paint.  Then we used cotton buds and the handmade brushes that we made with John John yesterday to spread the paint all over!  The texture of the shiny and smooth tinfoil added with the creamy paint being gently rubbed really calmed us down.  Even Gohsan loved it so much!

 Green Everything!

On the floor, there was a good selection of toys like blocks, big and small Lego piece, balls, bean bags, wooden blocks and yoga mats but all in GREEN!  We enjoyed using our creative minds; stacking; dismantling; collecting; hiding; sitting; and throwing :)  We like it when we have choices because we are all so different in how we like to play.  Some like to experience the cool and smooth surface of a scarf and others like to pretend the things are food to store in the kitchen...Isn’t it so nice to be different and inspire one another!

 Green and Golden Sparkly Playdough

Just as much as we like to be active, we love sensory activities which calm us down.  We simply love to knead the playdough in our little hands or to make shapes using rolling pins, pizza cutters, cookie cutters and capsules (ones you get from gacha gacha machines) which turned out quite popular among our friends!

 Circle Time

We spread are arms to the sides and pretended to fly like an airplane along Blue Airplane by Ralph Covert because today we were traveling to a new country, Ireland!  Once we landed (on our circles), Nanako taught us a new song that went like this…

I’m a little Leprechaun

Dressed in green.

The tiniest man that you have seen.

If you ever catch me so it’s told.

I’ll give you my big pot of gold.

Nanako asked us to put our arms in our mystery box to find out what Irish people like to eat...Can you guess?  It is brown and shaped like an oval.  Yes, potatoes!  We  also read a story The Way Back Home actually written by an Irish author, Oliver Jeffers.

We were lucky that the weather held and we were able to go for a nice walk to the temple and to the fish pond where we found something that looked like a long, worn out rope...Imagine that, it is a long strip of eggs laid by a kind of frog called, ushigaeru (bullfrog)!  We’re excited to observe tadpoles soon!

Love from the children in Buds xoxo