Australia and Shinkansen

          Happy Friday! Our hands were full as we played with blocks, letters, and made shinkansen tickets. Some of our friends had fun time dressing up and walking in Cinderella shoes. Ra seemed to find the baby doll fascinating as he tried cuddling and changing its dress. We also made shinkansen tickets with old calling cards that we covered with colored paper. We wrote Tokyo to indicate the station Princess Train is departing, and another station name for where it is arriving. We kept in mind that we agreed that the arriving stations will be Niigata, Chiba, and Osaka. Writing the station names was a good way in which we worked on our recognition and writing of letters.

          After a fun-filled morning free play, we gathered in our library and sang our songs about greetings in the world and the continents. We were surprised to see Shelley and thought that perhaps she was today’s guest speaker, and we were right! So, we sat with her and welcomed her in Flowers. We tried to guess where she came from and probably, it would be the country that she would talk about today. We thought she was from Israel, America, or Africa. We learned that she was born in South Africa and then moved to Australia when she became a grown-up.

ALL ABOUT AUSTRALIA

          Big thanks to Shelley for coming to Flowers today to talk about Australia! It was surprising and exciting to hear how much Australians love sports. Some of the sports that they play in Australia are familiar to us namely, tennis, soccer, basketball, swimming, dancing, cycling, and rugby. On the other hand, it was our first time to hear about Australia rules football, netball, and cricket. We also learned a very good chant that they use when they’re watching sports. Let’s see how many friends remember it! We hope Flowers friends can share this chant with their family.

          Shelley asked us what we eat in our county. One thing that we learn from our International Months celebration is to each country has a special food that we should respect because everyone is different but it’s okay.

          Shelley: What do you eat in your country?

          Au: Macaroons               A: magic cupcake

          Sh: Chala                          B: rice

          R: Sushi                             I: Pizza

          K: Curry                             R: fish noodles

          Re: fish noodles              Hi: ramen

          Ke: Pear                              C: Hamburger

          Hi: O-dango                       Ki: sticky rice

          Shelley: In Australia, it’s shrimp on the barbeque and in South Africa, it’s sausage.

Talking about food, Shelley brought something from Australia. D looked at it and said, “I know that! That’s chocolate!”. We tried to smell it and thought that it didn’t have smell like chocolate. What do you think is it? You’re right! It was vegemite. Au asked if he could try it and when Shelley put some in his mouth, he said, “It tastes like not the yummy chocolate “. It would be the first time for us and teachers to have vegemite toast. Shelley mixed butter and vegemite then, we took turns in spreading it on the bread slices. We noticed that the smell changed a bit. Then they were placed in the oven and after a few minutes, a very yummy smell came out from the kitchen. We tried them and they were so good😊

CIRCLE TIME

          We turned our listening ears on as we braced ourselves for animal sounds guessing game. Our teachers were impressed at how well we were able to guess the animal sounds. Vieda said, “How about this sound? Can you guess it?”. We listened carefully and tried to guess what it was. We thought that it was thunder, rainy day, whale, shark, or tornado, but it wasn’t! It was the shinkansen!

          We turned our attention to the question of the day (Does shinkansen use battery?). Here are our ideas:

          Sh: It has a machine which we need to put inside shinkansen battery. A little bit big battery.

          Au: He put the battery of the shinkansen and charge it. It makes the power of the shinkansen move.

          Ki: If you don’t put charge on the shinkansen, the shinkansen don’t move. Some shinkansen move by itself.

          Kyi: Shinkansen don’t have battery inside. The driver will push button.

          Di: Put down the shinkansen. It have train tracks so it’s gonna be faster.

          Be: If you have tracks, you can run. You have to have support like long train tracks. When I went to Kidzania, they have the real one. You put this and it moves.  They don’t use battery, just the handle.  

Those who had been on a shinkansen also shared what they felt when they were on it.

          K: I sleep.

          A: It was just smooth. They collect garbage and they give you coffee.

          Ky: My daddy drink coffee, you see lady. She gives you coffee and you don’t need to pay.

We also read a story and tried to answer the question of the day. Re said that “ shinkansen is light and strong to move and magnet moves”. Sh also taught us how a steam train sounds like in Hebrew. We also looked at the things that a shinkansen driver takes when he drives it.

          A: A special type of phone.

         Sh: The driver see the color. He stop the train. He just hold the remote control then he pulls it backwards. Do the switch then stop.

          Au: It has a button so there was a red you need to press down. Then the train stop at the station. Press the red button.

          Be: Shinkansen stop when you pull the handle down.

          Di: When you have the red things, we press like this button. It have battery then stop.

We are not yet sure if batteries make the shinkansen moves. Or it could be magnets, as our friend Re suggested. Ky said that it could be electricity, too. Our discussion shifted to how the driver stops the shinkansen at the station. Ky suggested that “maybe we can check in the books from the library”. That’s a brilliant idea. Next week, we can separate in groups as we check some facts about shinkansen.

We hope you will have a great weekend!

Love,

Flowers XOXO