Our first day of 2015

We welcomed back all of our friends and teachers for the start of the new school term and the start of the New Year. We were so happy to see everyone and we went straight into our routine almost as if we had never been away on holiday. We started off the day making a fan, which is one of the symbols that we see displayed during New Year here in Japan. In fact, Shelley did some research on the meaning of the fan and it said that a fan represents the spreading of seeds; so that families have plenty of descendants, spreading their name across many generations. We looked at a real fan which Shelley received from John, the new teacher, as a gift from China. It opens up really wide and has many folds. We learnt how to fold our piece of paper into a fan. We first chose either a red or white piece of paper and made one fold. Then we flipped the entire piece of paper over and made another fold. We continued doing this until the entire piece of paper had been folded. We then opened it up gently and started to paste pieces of origami on it together with sparkles and some other shiny shapes. We each took one picture of a ram, which is the animal represented in Chinese astrology for this year and we pasted it on the fan. In order to make it into a real fan, we put some tape on one end and wrapped a gold and silver thread around it. The last thing that we did was to open it up and wave it like a real fan. We already have some documentation on the wall in our classroom and the fans displayed in a circular shape. Our friends, who were not at school today, will make theirs tomorrow.

During one of our circle times, we looked carefully at the fan from China and then looked at ones on a “Shimekazari”. The ones on the “Shimekazari” are really small and Michaela said: “That’s the baby”. Then we looked at the one that we had made and she said: “That is the mummy, but where is the daddy?” Shelley was not sure where the daddy was and one of us said: “He is in your tummy”. So Shelley went to look for him and she came back with one that was also quite small. We were not satisfied. We think that a daddy is bigger than a mummy and the one that she brought back was a baby one. She then asked us: “Is a daddy always bigger than a mummy?” and we all said: “Yes”. This was not too much of a problem and we continued our discussion. We learnt about the symbolism of a fan and had fun singing a New Year song called “Sing-a-long-song”. We learnt earlier in the day that people in Japan say “Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu, kotoshimo yoroshiku onegaishimasu”. We sang these words in the song. Hisami also taught us a song about the New Year called “Oshogatsu”. The words of the songs talk about all the things that we can play with at New Year e. g. spinning top, kite, kendamma and hagoita. We learnt how to play with a spinning top, a paper ball, the kendamma and hagoita. We didn’t play with a kite because usually you play with kites outside and we were inside our classroom.

We clapped the number of syllables for the word “Shimekazari” and then did the same for our names. “Shimekazari” had five syllables and all of our names had either three or two. We counted out five friends and teachers had three syllables in their names and six had two. We have been comparing many things in our classroom this morning. We looked at two “Shimekazari” and tried to find both similarities and differences. The similarities were that they both had fans, pine branches, red and white, and they were both small. The differences were that one had dark green pine branches and the other one had both dark and light green pine branches; one had a golden drum shape and a ‘daruma’ type of face and the other had a thread with three balls in red, yellow and green. We then looked at two rulers and said that one was big and the other one was small. We are noticing many things in the classroom in this way. These are some “Shimekazari that we saw on the way to the park”.

We have to admit that we confused our teachers a lot today. Giorgia came to school and told them that he name was Elsa and not Giorgia and then Mike joined in the game and said that she was Anna. Michaela then said that she was also Elsa. Giorgia kept her name as Elsa for the entire day and even responded when our teachers called her Elsa. Maybe tomorrow we will have different names again.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel