Bulgaria Day!

Our martenitsa.

Free Play

We started the day by making hinamatsuri dolls, playing with cars, puzzles and in our garden. Sayaka took photos of us together while we played with cars and Pauline helped us make our hina dolls. Kai was outside helping us “plant” a tree. We had a funnel to funnel in the soil. The only problem is that it would get stuck from the rocks falling in. We decided we also want rocks in there so we put it in one by one.

Plastic or Wood?

We brought the tree that we planted in the middle of our circle. Kai asked us what things are made from trees? He showed us the wooden white chair and said it was made from trees. n said, “Toilet paper!”. We took turns looking around the room to see what object we had that a made from trees. We found lots of objects that were made from plastic but not wood. We tried to distinguish what is wood and what is plastic. The plastic items that we found were: stickle bricks and Lego blocks. We did manage to find wooden blocks and wooden puzzles in our room.

ALARM ALARM!!

We had a fire drill today! At first, we all thought it was an earthquake and we hid under the table. After listening to the teachers we realized it was a fire drill and walked down nicely one by one.

Bulgaria

 We looked at a flag and called out what colors we saw:

Kai: What colors can you see on the flag?

S: Green

A: White

Y: Red

(Kai explained to us where Bulgaria is in relation to Japan) We had to take a plane there. It’s in Europe and it’s closer to Norway than it is to Japan. Kai then showed us the martenitsa that some of us made earlier this week. The martenitsa is something special that Bulgarians wear during the month of March. The red on the bracelet means life and the white is for good luck. When the bracelet is put on, it is not taken off until we see something. What do we need to see before we take the bracelet off? Let’s find out:

Kai: Do you know what this is?

S: It’s a bird

A: Maybe it’s a sleeping mommy

N: Maybe it’s... food?

Z: It’s a baby

Kai told us that there are stories of this bird, called a stork, delivering babies to families. But we knew it wasn’t true.

Kai: How do babies come out?

A: Home out

N: It can come from the egg

Kai: Yes some babies come from eggs. What about human babies?

Z: It can come from the tummy. A long time ago, L and me were in the tummy, and then we were born from Mommy’s tummy. L was in Papa’s tummy.

In Bulgaria, the storks build their large nest on top of chimneys and telephone poles. Every year at the end of winter they come back to the same spot and build their nest. So when we see a stork, then we can take off our martenitsa. Do we have storks in Japan? In Tokyo? No fear, Kai asked us to look at the picture of the martenitsa to see if we see anything else. We saw trees, leaves and FLOWERS! Yes, so when we see flowers bloom we can also take off our martenitsa.

What do we do with it when it’s off? Well in Bulgaria they hang it on a tree but here in Petals Class if we see our Petals tree blossom then we can hang it on our tree. We’ll see next week if we can finish our martenitsa, keep it until we see a stork or flowers blossom!

 Park

We wanted to go to the green area today to play today and we wanted to bring the cones and circles. We played a lot of games with objects and ran around a lot. We also saw Hamish at the park who couldn’t get enough of us and wanted to play together! The weather was perfect and it was a wonderful day to play outside.

Thank you for reading! Hope you had a wonderful week as well.

XOXO,

Petals Class Children