Yummy Makizushi!

Tuesday 24th February  

We’ve been making our own coins and flags so this morning when some Flowers were making their flags we asked them what their flag’s country was called, what their special country is. At first it was hard to come up with ideas so we gave the children some clues and they started to come up with some great names. Noa’s flag and coin are from ‘Noaland’, Lucinda’s are from ‘Kingdom of Lucinda’, Jeremy’s are from ‘Mew Zealand’ and Olivia’s are from Darren Japan. Toku, Adam and Ethan decided to call theirs ‘Ninjago’. Marc’s is ‘Japan’. Ryan’s is ‘Canada’ and Jennifer’s is ‘England’. (We will ask everyone this week). All our Flowers have created really interesting flags and coins, taking ideas from real flags and coins.

On the other table this morning some Flowers were doing the hiragana puzzle and some children played several flag games. We learnt that some Flowers know more flags than the teachers!

The park was busy with a Japanese preschool when we arrived so some Flowers played together with them at the far end and some Flowers were busy playing with the sand toys.

When we came back from the park we knew there were some special guests coming to make something with us (but we didn’t know what) so we washed hands and then read a Doll’s festival book called ‘Ohinasama ga umareta yo’. Two mice wanted to make a Hina doll so they got an egg and found some origami paper and made a beautiful Hina doll. They were admiring it when they suddenly heard some tapping and the egg cracked open and a chick was born.

When we finished we were happy to see Arata, Noa and Kosei’s Mums come in. When Ayaka asked what country’s food we are going to make today, a few children shouted out “Japan’ and yes they were right. Michiru told us we are going to make Makizushi. Yaeko told us we need to make sushi rice. Sushi rice is a little bit different to regular rice as we need to add some special vinegar based flavor. We have to mix the rice up while it’s hot and use a fan to cool it down and cooling it down quickly with a fan also makes the rice become shiny. So now we were ready to make sushi. Yaeko showed us how to make it and then we wall took turns to make some makizushi. First we put the nori onto the makisu (the mat for rolling sushi), making sure it was right on the edge. We spread the rice onto three quarters of the nori and then lined up the cucumber, avocado, shrimp and egg.

Next came the tricky part of rolling up the sushi. With a little help we all did a great job. Because we had to use a sharp knife the Mums helped us to cut the sushi too.

We were so happy with the final product, yummy makizushi.

Thank you to Miyuki, Michiru and Yaeko for preparing the ingredients and teaching us how to make makizushi.

Flowers really wanted to eat the makizushi straight away so everyone chose one piece and ate it before their lunch and then when they had finished they could choose one or two more pieces.

Have a great day, and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

All our love, Ayaka, Goh and Sharee