Spring Is Here!
Welcome back to Ohana! One week of spring break seemed like a very long time for us. We were so excited to chat and play with our friends. We just had so many stories to share with our friends and teachers. What a great way to start our circle time with NEWS from us! Here are some of the “news” that we shared this morning:
Ky: I have a big trampoline in my Chiba house.
Ke: I went to the park with Chris. We played together.
Ch: I went to Toyosu with L and A.
K: I eat lunch with my friend Li-chan and R-chan, the baby, U and me!
A: I got 2 news. I go with Y and L at Hayama. And I play “tasku” and he came to my home.
Me: I went to the art museum. They have scary stuff there.
R: I went to Chiba house.
L: I went to play snow next to Mount Fuji.
Ky: My otanjoubi (birthday), I go to Disneyland and to Pirates.
We sang our morning song, “Hello______, ohayogozaimasu!” and talked about our feelings. Some of our friends needed time to identify their feelings, or else they would say, “I don’t have feelings today!”. Ak shared about how he thinks his pet dog has feelings of its own. He said, “I only can tell if it screams like the same. If it screams loud, other people only Mommy, Daddy and Hi-chan when the door open at home, she don’t scream. He only scream to other people. When my friends came to my pet, she scream and shake her tail. Yes, indeed! Dogs and other animals have feelings, too like us! We are excited to hear our friends’ feelings tomorrow!
Springtime is here! Everyone talks about how we have already said goodbye to winter, and hello to spring. But, what exactly does spring mean? We had our turn to draw what our idea was about spring.
K: Flower is everywhere.
K: I see sakura tree at Step Park.
Ch: Tuliip
M: Lots of tulips.
Ak: Everywhere, there is lots of sakura.
R: Cars
Li: I see flowers.
STORY TIME: Spring Has Sprung by Kiki Thorpe, Illustrated by Tom Brannon
During our story time, the Bear suggested some fun activities that we could do to make our spring days exciting. Before Vieda read them to us, she asked if we could think of activities that we could do in spring. Of course, we were more than happy to share!
K: We can grow food.
K: Play jumping rope.
A: We can catch sakura like what we did at Step Park.
Li: We can play badminton.
Ch: We can play basketball outside.
Just like we saw in our story book today, we were quite curious if there are other animals that hatch from eggs. Some of our friends mentioned dinosaurs, chicken, fish, shell, and frogs. The thought of seeing baby animals born in the springtime makes us very excited! Moreover, springtime means a time to grow plants. At the mere mentioned of “grow plants”, several hands went up.
K: I have a basil at home.
K: I have a plant in a glass. It’s actually from my Mommy’s birthday. Some are dead and dying, but some are still okay so they’re in a glass.
A: I have a plant before but not anymore.
Me: I have basil at home.
Ch: Actually, I have a lot of plants like rosemary, sakura, avocado, strawberry, and bell pepper.
That’s great! In fact, we are growing flowers and vegetables in our balcony as well. We took turns so we could take a closer look at our balcony plants. Then, we tried to identify the ones that we could actually eat! Imagine, we could eat fresh vegetables that we grow in our very own balcony!
We can’t help not to fall in love with SPRING! We are so happy to say hello to spring and discover many things about it!
QUESTION OF THE DAY: Can we eat sakura petals and leaves?
We saw lots of cherry blossoms or sakura when we went to Step Park today. We had fun trying to catch its petals as the wind blew them off its tree. Well, some of our friends smelled it and giggled after smelling it. Can we eat it?
Ak: No, we cannot eat it because we can only flower and leaves we cannot eat.
T: No, we cannot because some of them have poison on the leaves.
Ke: If you eat leaves, you can die.
A: No because leaves and flowers are not food.
K: But goats can eat it!
Ky: No, because you eat and you die and you need to go to the doctor.
On the other hand, some of our friends thought that we can eat sakura leaves and petals. Here are their reasons:
K: Yes because salad is leaves and we eat it.
Ch: I eat bay leaves so I think we can also eat sakura leaves.
A: We can eat lettuce which is a leaves, so I think we can also eat sakura leaves.
Me: Yes, because I want to eat that!
Ch: Because cabbage is a leaf, so we can also eat sakura leaves.
L: Yes, because some vegetables come from leaves.
And the answer is….. here in Japan, there are different ways we can eat sakura petals and leaves. Some of these are sakura mochi (sticky rice), sakura tea (made of dried sakura petals and leaves0 and hanami dango (dumplings for flowers viewing). Amazing! We were cautioned though that we should not eat the sakura petals that we see at the parks.
GROUP WORK
As we talked about spring and the things that are associated with it, we started to be fascinated with the “how” of the things that we learned. Certainly, we got so much to share so to give each friend an opportunity to do so, we separated into 3 groups. Each group was tasked to discuss and explore one question. We drew pictures to represent our ideas. You can find below what we have talked about so far. We will continue working on our group work and then share it with the whole class.
Group 1 - How do flowers grow?
A: Just need seed and it grow it into a flower.
L: Inside the circle, in the middle of the flower is where the heart is.
A: I came from my Mom. My Mom? I don’t know where she came from.
Group 2 – What animals hatch from eggs?
Cr: One time, I watched Jurassic Park, I saw that the dinosaur poked his own shell so it cracked. I think chicken, peacock, crocodile, and dinosaur hatch from eggs.
K: Maybe snake’s eggs are circles. The grown up snake makes the eggs circle shape so the other animals don’t escape and get ti. All the snake’s eggs are hatching at one time.
K: Dinosaur have eggs. Snakes have too but snake’s eggs have poison.
Group 3 – How does a butterfly grow?
In the beginning, our group thought that butterflies started off with something else. As we talked about it, we realized that we got it a bit off and remember a famous storybook that we read about it before.
Ka: From the bug, then caterpillar then rainbow butterfly.
Ak: Butterfly come out from the bee or tree. It come out from the bee and then the butterfly comes from the ocean.
Ke: There is something inside the ocean. The butterfly comes from the ocean.
Ti: Maybe it came from the cocoon.
Ak: First, it was an egg then caterpillar eat, and it became big ang then butterfly.
It is great to be back at school and learn things about spring! Let’s all have fun and enjoy exploring about spring!
Love,
Flowers Class