Kimi wa nanidoshi?
19 December - Daily Journal
The theme of our last day of Winter Wonderland, was the New Year! In the Chinese counting, 2015 will be the year of sheep. We made colorful stamps with vegetables and fruits and we also cooked a special meal called ‘oshiruko.’
This morning, when the buds came into the classroom, they soon realized a tray with vegetables and fruits on the activity table. In the tray, we saw a paprika, asparagus, onion, okura, pealed apple skin, broccoli stem, celery, lotus root, cabbage, and an egg plant hat. We first chose a vegetable or a fruit and dipped it in to a tray with paint - there were five colors. Many of the buds were able to tell the names of the colors and guess the names of the vegetables and fruits. Leanne guessed “cucumber (asparagus)”, “pineapple (broccoli),” and “daikonn (celery).” She first thought the onion looked like a cabbage and when it was stamped she said the shape looked like a “banana.” Hana was able to guess “okura” and “onion.” At first the apple skin looked like “meat” but once she used her smelling nose she realized it smelt like “apple.” Kaia guessed “apple (paprika)” and “egg(plant).” Karl was able to say all the colors – red, yellow, blue and green - except for orange which looked like “red.” He was quite imaginative and said the lotus root looks like “noodle.” Faith was able to say “red” and “blue.” Each vegetable and fruit came out differently when they were stamped on a white piece of paper - sometimes, the colors mixed and made really interesting blend of colors. Hana was especially enjoying make a gradation of colors with one piece of paprika.
On the sensory table, some buds enjoyed making shapes with our peppermint play dough and others enjoyed telling stories with the farm animals in the sensory tub. All the buds drew lines and circles in Faith’s portfolio. Sadly, Faith will not be coming back to school after the holiday for she will be going to another school. During circle time, we went over her art works in her portfolio and talked about what she has achieved since she joined the Buds class – we could see that she has been very busy learning and experiencing many things with our friends and teachers. Well done Faith! We will miss you but we will be waiting for you and looking forward to seeing you at the bye bye party in January.
On our last day of Winter school, the teachers thought it would be nice to cook and we wanted to make a special dish for the New Year’s days. Among many things we eat in the New Year is ‘omochi’ – a rice cake which is made of ‘mochi ko (sticky rice).’ Recently many people prefer to buy already-made mochi in packs that you can boil or grill. In fact, in the past we used to make mochi by steam-cooking the sticky rice and then transferring the cooked rice in to a stoned or wooded mortar called ‘usu’ and a wooden stick called ‘kine’ to pound the rice with a bit of water until it became sticky and was ready to be cut into different shapes. This process requires such hard work that it was an event done by all the people in a village. Unfortunately, we could not make mochi like in the past but instead we made ‘shiratama dango’ which is also made of powdered sticky rice. We mixed a bag full of ‘shiratama-ko’ with two cups of water. We used our fingers to squeeze the dough until it was as soft as our ear lobes. Then we made small balls out of the dough all ready to be boiled in hot water. We served the ‘shiratama-dango’ with sweet red bean soup – this dish is called ‘oshiruko.’ After we came back from the park, we had our lunch and had oshiruko for dessert. Yum yum yum, we all loved it!
For story time, we read the Big Red Barn about all the animals living in a farm. We saw a donkey, mice, horses, cows, roosters and hens, dogs, cats, ducks and sheep. We also sang Old McDonald Had a Farm and Baba Black Sheep. After looking at all the different kinds of animals, Nanako talked about the animals counted in the Chinese years. We call the twelve animals ‘junishi’ in Japanese and we sang a song called Junishi no uta – ne (mouse), ushi (cow), tora (tiger), u(rabbit), tatsu (dragon), mi (snake), uma (horse), hitsuji (sheep), saru (monkey), tori (hen), inu (dog) and i (wild pig). Next year will be the year of sheep. We hope that all our friends, teachers, parents and extended family to have a lovely Winter holiday. We look forward to seeing you all back at school in January 2015 and for those who will not be coming back, we wish you all to have a safe and wonderful journey ahead!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Nanako, Sayaka and Maki