And we'll go walking down the street

It was sooooo cold this morning however when it was time for us to go to the park, a few rays of sunshine had come out. We had a great morning in Petals Class as we decorated our “chitose-ame” bags with a few things. We put glue on the back of two pieces of paper that had Japanese words on them. The one word was “chitose-ame” and the other word was “gotobuki” which means a celebration for long life. In fact we also pasted a turtle, “kame” in Japanese which symbolizes long life. Turtles can live for years and years so the wish for us when it is “Shichigosan” is that we have a long life. “Chitose-ame” is the name given to the colourful candy that we carry in our long bags and we eat at this time. There are three kanji for “Chitose-ame” – the first one means 1,000, the second one means years and the last one means candy. The candy always comes in a long bag which is also a symbol of long life. We made a hand print in white which will become a crane or “tsuru” in the next few days. The “tsuru” is also a symbol for long life. We wonder how long we will live to one day when we are grandmas and grandpas!

When we had finished doing these decorations on our bags, we went to play on the carpet and our challenge was to find the Lego pieces that matched the ones already on the board. We spent a long time looking for them and managed to complete a vertical line of green, yellow, red and blue. The other colours are slight variations and there are not so many pieces in these colours.

When we had packed all of the large Lego blocks away, Shelley took out a box of small Lego. Well, we could have spent the entire day playing with it. Our teachers observed us during this time and noticed how the boys all made vehicles with wheels and moved around the room, making noises with them and pushing them along the floor. The girls had a completely different focus. They sat and chatted and built houses and gardens with the small pieces of Lego. We also had large squares of roads which the boys used for their transport. Tomorrow we will take the small Lego out again and our teachers are looking forward to seeing what we will do with it this time. Hisami read to us a Japanese story about a newborn baby coming home from the hospital with mummy. She read it to us in Japanese and English. After playing in the park, we did some Yoga exercises and breathed deeply to make our bodies quiet after an energetic time outside in the fresh air. On our way back from the park, we noticed some of the people that we see in our neighbourhood. We sang

“The taxi driver is a person in the neighbourhood,  in the neighbourhood, in the neighbourhood A taxi driver is a person in the neighbourhood, that we meet on the street each day”.

We saw the delivery person, policeman, garbage, construction worker, cyclist, grandmas etc. In one of our circle times, we all had a turn to be either the shopper or the shopkeeper. The song goes like this:

“And we’ll go walking, walking, walking, walking, walking down the street

Shopping, shopping, shopping, shopping, shopping for things to eat……”

We went to buy bread from the baker; vegetables from the supermarket; a dog from the pet shop; pizza from the pizza parlour; ice cream from the gelato bar and spaghetti from the restaurant. We are developing the theme each day and our teachers are planning on presenting us with something interesting in the next few days, to make it even more exciting.

We changed our calendar today and discovered that it is a new month now. It is called November. It was a cloudy day today. We don’t have a picture that says it is cold. Maybe we can talk to our teachers about this and add it to our weather pictures. We forgot to tell you that we started doing our own beds for rest time. We love laying the mattresses out and putting our blankets on them, all ready for when we have finished lunch and done our chores.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.