New Year Hanetsuki Game

This morning when we arrived there was a large piece of black paper on the table with a small picture of the earth in the center. Next to the paper was a tray of colored stars, some orange, some red, some blue and some shiny yellow. Noa and Riko decided where they wanted to put the earth and helped glue it to the paper. Soon they were joined by many other friends and we all began sticking the stars onto the paper. There were lots and lots of them to stick on the paper and soon it looked really sparkly just like the real night sky. On the second table Adam did his New Year calligraphy with Ayaka’s help. He first practiced using water to get used to the brush and then went ahead and used the black ink. To complete their ‘shuji’ work Ethan Ryan, Marc, Jeremy, Arata, Tokutaro and Alexis all attached the bamboo to the top and bottom of their work. We then put them up in the classroom with their friends work. They look great, well done guys! Nile and Eito started their morning playing with the new Duplo toys making vehicles on the carpet. On the main table we discovered some wonderful sticky stringy art string called ‘Bendaroos’. They are colored and waxed pieces of string which can be bent to many shapes. Jeremy made a car picture with them while Alexis made a great picture of a girl with long hair. Nanako introduced a great Japanese game called Karuta to us this morning which was very popular and helped us with our Japanese too. After snack we went to the park and checked the flowers in our school garden. The pansies we planted before the winter break are doing very well but some of the older plants may not last much longer so we will try and arrange for some new ones soon. The balls were very popular in the fenced area today with Adam and Tokutaro taking the lead in a game of soccer. After returning to the classroom we checked some of the new things we have done this year. We knew we had made some calligraphy artwork as well as some beautiful decorated spinning tops. The teachers then showed us some wooden bats called ‘Hanetsuki’ along with a ball with feathers attached called a ‘Hane’. The bats are used to hit the ball in a game called ‘Hagoita’. It is a traditional game played by two people a little like badminton but does not have a net. The idea is to hit the ball back and forwards as many times as possible. The bats we had were new but look a little plain so we decided to paint them. We divided into two groups and while some of us painted our Hanetsuki the second group had a try at playing Hagoita with our friends. It was a lot more difficult than it looks as Ayaka and Nanako demonstrated for us in the classroom. Thank you Nanako and Ayaka. It was a great game to watch. We looked very quickly at a book with a beautiful picture of the sun and the earth in it. We were all amazed to find out that actually all the stars we see in the night sky are really suns but look so small as they are so far away. Wow!! Have a great weekend.