Winter Wonderland
Our theme for this week is “Winter Wonderland” so we are focusing on things that we think make a winter wonderland. At this time of year in many places there is a lot of snow. Actually here in Tokyo, we had snow as well yesterday. Today we made a Xmas stocking with material. We each got two pieces of fabric with holes punched into them. Our task was to sew the two pieces together from the top all the way down one side along the bottom. 
We had to leave the top part open because this is where you put things inside. Teachers thought that this activity took a long time and we did it mostly one on one as we needed one of our teachers to guide us. However, most of us did very well. We didn’t need the teachers help very much.
After snack, Ayaka read a book called “Christmas Rhyme Time” In the book, we needed to turn the wheel and find the 
correct Christmas object, then the missing words will appear in the poem. One of the poems goes like this- Santa spotted the stockings-Some fancy, some plain- And slipped in each one. A big red CANDY CANE. We can hang our stockings at home and hope Santa will come and give us presents!
Monday’s in our regular programme is our gymnastics day with Tanaka Sensei. We were so happy to be able to continue this schedule during winter school. Our lesson today followed on from our lesson last week and we did our warm up being a table, bunny, crocodile and frog. First, we did the ‘Ninja’ activity. We needed to change into Ishi(Rock), Ki (Tree), and Kabe(Wall). Our next activity was somersaulting and Bear walking. We also did two games, the first one was one of our favorite games “Ohikkoshi (Moving) game”. It was like musical chairs. The one of us who didn’t get a house called out “ohikkoshi”. Then our friends needed to 
change their cushion house. All of us said “Ohikkoshi” so clearly with our big voices. Our last game was “Kori (Ice) game”. We all could move only with our bottoms. When Tanaka Sensei tagged one of us, that friend became ice and froze, but we could melt and save our friends, so finally we won the game and Tanaka Sensei gave up!
We then sang some songs that are connected to winter, Christmas etc. We sang “Awaten bou no Santa Claus”; “We wish you a Merry Christmas” and “Jingle Bells”. We sang “Jingle Bells” in English and 
Japanese. We had a fun time at the park of course and hope we’ll be able to go to the park tomorrow too!
Love always Ayaka, Hisami and Liezel