Japanese Tea Ceremony

We stayed in Japan today to take part in a traditional Japanese cultural event; the ‘Tea Ceremony’. We were very lucky and fortunate to have Nile’s mother Nanaka show us all about the tea ceremony. Thank you Nanaka. We started the morning in the classroom and Adam made his beautiful Hina Matsuri doll using the felt and origami paper. All of us have now finished our dolls and they are on display in the classroom. Please take a look. On the carpet area there was a big Montessori map of Asia along with the card outline of the countries. We had a lot of fun moving the puzzle pieces onto the card outlines and then moving them back into the puzzle frame. The trains and cars were again popular today with Lucinda making a very big track across half of the carpet area. On the main table Marc, Olivia and Nile saw some trays with different shapes embossed into them. The areas represented the land and the ocean and had different names such as bay, lake, peninsula, straight, island etc. We used some blue colored water to pour them into the trays and could then see the land and sea easily. We moved to the large wall map to look at where we could see some of the features such as lakes and islands. We noticed the great lakes in North America and all the islands that make up Indonesia too. It was soon time to move upstairs for our special tea ceremony with Nile’s mother Nanaka. We went up in groups of four or five and were happy to see all the things spread out on the 3^rd floor for the tea ceremony. Nanaka then told us how we need to take our shoes off before we sit on the tatami mat. If we step on the mat it brings bad luck. Nile’s mother then took us through the process of making tea;

Clean all the tools and materials for the guests

Open the hot water pot and pour some into the cup to warm it

Wipe the cup dry

Add green tea powder

Pour in hot water using the wooden ladle and balance the ladle on the top of the tea pot.

Mix the tea powder with the hot water using the bamboo whisk.

The tea is then drunk using 2 hands, one on the side and the other on the bottom.

The cup is then cleaned using hot water.

The guest then says “Oshimae Kudasi” to stop receiving tea.

We were very lucky we also got some snacks to eat with the tea ceremony too. Very yummy! Thank you Nanaka it was a great activity for the children and we all really enjoyed ourselves. When we came back to the classroom we headed for the park. It was nice and warm in the sunshine and we played, ran jumped, skipped and chased our friends all around the park. In circle time we firstly sang our “Love is Something if you give it away” song and then thought all about how things are different in different countries. We came up with a list of things: buildings, Food, Language, Clothes, Flags, Money and People. Thinking about money we then together made a design for a coin. We put the number 1 on one side along with zig-zag lines, dots, stripes, an eagle, some hearts and a duck. We will make our own designs in class tomorrow morning.