Koinobori

Happy Monday everyone! We have a very short week and after school is finished it’s Golden Week! Some of our dads and moms had the day off today because it is a national holiday and they took us to school, what a treat! We were also super excited for our special lunches our parents prepared for us! Once we were done with all of our jobs we sat down with Evita and tore colorful paper into small pieces! We pasted them on a big piece of paper then we chose where we wanted to stick the picture of our faces. We were making a special card for the people Noto, Nimo would explain more in detail later. After we were done with the card, we finished up any other craft we needed to do then played with the stickle bricks. 

We practiced our Mom’s day song and dance then started our circle time. We had a special guest today named L, she came and did a short activity with us! She started with a book called, “That I Not My Dinosaur”.

M: I like dinosaurs.

R: I like this one! *Pointed at the triceratops*

J: That is a stegosaurus!

M: Oh a T-rex! I like T-rex!

R: Roar!!!!

M: I have dinosaur books at home!

J: I have lots of dinosaur books.

When we were finished with the story, we did a fun activity with the dinosaur eggs. There were 10 eggs on the floor and when the eggs hatch they turn into dinosaurs! We sang, “One little, two little, three little, dinosaur…” and did some stomping and roaring!

We sat back down into a circle and Nimo told us why we made a card for Noto. First he showed us a map:

M: A map! Chizu!

K: Korea!

R: Tokyo

J: Where’s Canada?

E: Japan.

Nimo: Good job! Tokyo is a part of Japan and it is here. Today we are going to talk about this little place that is sticking out at the top. This is Noto Peninsula. Do you remember when it was New Year, we had a big earthquake. Noto got hit pretty hard.

We all took a few pictures of the city with broken houses and squashed cars.

T: Oh no… broken…

Y: Dangerous…

Nimo: The people here have broken homes, no bed, and not much food. Shelley is going to go here to help the people out and she is going to take a card from Petals to help cheer them up! What can we say to the people in Noto?

J: I don’t know.

Nimo: When the earthquake happened it was snowing, and they lost their houses and had to stay in the cold.

A: When I go outside and play in the snow, I get cold so I go inside and drink hot chocolate.

Nimo: The people in Noto probably didn’t have hot chocolate at the time.

A: Oh, I hope they can stay warm.

Nimo: That’s a good one! We can write that on our card! Any others?

J: They need to be strong!

Nimo: I like that we could say, “Stay strong!”. How about in Japanese?

M: Ganbatte!

Nimo: Perfect! Some of the people have ouchies and got sick. What can we say to them?

M: Feel better

L: We love you.

R: Take care…

Nimo: Great ideas! Let’s write those down. Are you worried for the people in Noto?

J: What’s worry?

Nimo: It’s when you care about someone and you are unsure if they are okay or not.

Petals: Yes!

Our kind-hearted friends all thought of great messages to send to the people in Noto, our teachers wrote them down and made little message bubbles and stuck them on our card! We hope they like it and it will help them cheer up a little bit.

For the second half of our circle time, we talked about Kodomo no Hi on May 5th. We took at the book, “I Live In Tokyo” by Mari Takabayashi again and we went to the page for May.

K: Koinobori!

Traditionally, families decorated their house with a Kabuto (Samurai helmet) and wished for the children’s good luck and good health! They also hang up a Koinobori (carp streamers), the carp is said to be a spiritual and strong animal because they can swim up waterfalls! We also took a look at a real koinobori, it was so cool! For our craft, we split up into two groups and we used colored circle stickers and stuck it on a roll of toilet paper for the colorful scales on the koi nobori. Then we added eyes and then used a strip of paper to make the tail!

After we finished our crafts we quickly ate our snacks then headed to the park together with Flowers!

Thank you for another wonderful day! We hope you all had a wonderful day off and we will see you all tomorrow!

Love,

Petals