Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! We hope that this year will be a wonderful one for all of us! Cheers to 2025!

A special welcome to Ko and his family, Hi and To who joined Flowers class today. We hope to make lots of beautiful memories with you. We are happy to welcome Nozomi Miyaji as part of the Flowers Team😊

Today also marked the beginning of term 2. We noticed that there were some changes in our daily schedule and class layout. Our sign in sheets can be found on top of the white bench, which Co suggested we call “sign in bench”. We liked her idea and voted, that is how we are going to call it. We missed our morning snack time but enjoyed spending time at the park earlier than usual. Lunch time was earlier, too, and our teachers were impressed at how quickly everyone finished lunch.

QUESTION of the DAY (Did you enjoy your winter break?)

We had so many stories we wanted to share about our winter break. Here are they:

              Hi: I enjoyed Kyoto watching Kinkakuji Golden building. I didn’t go inside.

              O: I went to Yamaguchi. I went to the skiing.

              Sh: I went to aquarium with one million fish, and also I go to a very boring place. There’s lots of things to do but everything was in Japanese. The last day I go to Ueno Zoo, and I saw a tiger eating a bone of something.

              Co: In the gas museum, there’s an elevator that goes up with a balloon. I went to grandma, grandpa’s house and there was shougatsu. I did woodcut printing. I print a scarf.

              R: When I go to Kyoto, I wear kimono. Color is pink and purple obi.

              Re: Is it India or Indiana.

              Co: India. Too many spicy things in India.

              Zo: I do this and fire!

              Re: I go to Wakayama. I eat kani. I eat crab feet and it was yummy! El was not eating. I don’t know the name, but I do something fun.

              To: I go it’s bowling! I eat some food and do bowling. I eat crackers. Only one (pin) I try again, I do five!

              Ty: I go to Niseko in Hokkaido. I did ski at Hokkaido. I ate pasta. But I was sick in Niseko.

              Yu: I go to Yatsugatakei. Hotel number is 2_ _ on the second floor. Me and mommy, no daddy because he needs to work because he’s a doctor. I eat crispy bread and corn cream soup.

              Hi: I go to hotel, and I eat oshougatsu breakfast.

              Co: In India, there was a kite party. One kid was kiting, and the other kids were running.

              Ko: Not funny.

              Mi: I changed my mind. I had fun.

Thank you so much for sharing your fun stories about your winter break! It seemed like everyone had fun during the winter break.

STORY TIME (I Live in Tokyo by Mari Takabayashi)

Talking about new year or o-shougatsu in Japan, we read a book about ways New Year’s Day is celebrated in Japan. Some of our friends recognized a special type of food called, o-sechi ryouri and said, “We had that at home!”. We looked at another type of food and wondered what it was. Re said, “Ozoni is mochi with soup in it”. When O heard ozoni, he excitedly said, “I eat ozoni with mochi. It’s yummy!”. Hi noticed a picture of children who were doing something that we did this morning. She said, “Oh, that’s the same thing we did this morning. The kids are writing Japanese on a white paper”. That’s right! We did our kakizome (first writing) where we chose what to write in Japanese. Ri proudly mentioned, “I did kakizome in my art class so, I know what to do.” We will keep you posted once everyone’s kakizome is up on display😊

Before we got ready for lunch time, we tried doing a New Year’s Day game that we saw in the book. It’s called fukuwarai (lucky laugh) where we tried to put the face features on the face, with our eyes closed!  It did really give us a LUCKY LAUGH! We can’t wait to play this game again.

See you all tomorrow!

Lots of love,

Flowers XOXO