Visiting the temple for Shichigosan

Today we continued working on our “people in the neighbourhood” project. Daiki made a chef; William B made a painter; Miyu made a Post Officer/Mail Person; Mika completed her farmer who farms cows and Lucinda’s farmer who farms pigs. We are loving this project as it gives us one to one time with our teachers and we discuss so many things together. We talk about what our person is going to do; what they need on their clothes; what they carry in their hands etc. We also talk about what they actually do. All of our people are works in progress and we will probably take another week to complete them. Then we will go and visit some people in the neighbourhood to see what they do. Our teachers were talking that November is coming to an end soon so we will continue this theme into December, without feeling pressured to complete everything.

When we choose what we want our people to be, we look at the many people that we have in our box of professions. Once we have chosen a profession, we look carefully at them and make so many things that we can see. Here you can see Miyu chan looking intently at the lady who delivers mail to see what else she can make for her mail person. She even added earrings, a mailbag and letters.

Today, following on from our Shichigosan celebrations yesterday, we walked with our Buds friends to the temple just up the road as part of one of the rituals of this festival. We went inside and saw so many things decorating the walls. It

looked like there were lots and lots of tiny people all standing in little spaces next to one another. Shelley lit a candle and then two sticks of incense and we clapped our hands two times and then bowed our heads. Some of us were able to throw a coin into the wooden box. We looked at the beautiful flowers everywhere and enjoyed the serenity of the place.

Afterwards we walked to the park and had a beautiful time playing in the warm sunshine. Today was a magnificent sunny day in Tokyo. When we came back from the park, we did Show and Tell. Today was William B’s Show and Tell. He brought with him a book about “Diggers” and he drew a picture of a digger. He told us some of the names of parts of diggers and what you do with them. He said that the jack helped the digger stay on the ground when it wasn’t moving. It supported the digger so that it stood straight and didn’t fall over. There was a scoop, a blade, a tyre and many other things. We were interested in all the things that he said and asked a few questions when it was question time. Even though it was not Lucinda’s Show and Tell today, she sat and showed us her x-ray photographs from last night. She told us that a big chair fell on her hand and so she had to go to the doctor to have photos taken of her bones. Luckily her bones were not broken and she just had a small bandage. Yesterday was her dad’s birthday so he spent the evening at the hospital with her and her mum, for his birthday. We changed the calendar and spent the morning completely immersed in our imaginative play with our friends and teachers.

We played a number game this morning where we had to count the beads on the abacus and match them with the number that was on display on the table. We could recognize most of the numbers and counted carefully to see that we had the correct number on the abacus. Every day in our class this week we are living proof that you can understand people even if they speak another language. Giorgia has been speaking to us in Italian and we in turn have been speaking to her in English; and we have had so much fun playing with each other. We don’t need words to be able to play with our friends; we just need something that we have in common, the desire to engage and share with others and a loving heart.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.