Hina matsuri - Thank you Mikiko, Hana and Kaho

Such a lovely Tuesday! The Buds said a big good morning to everyone and we are all ready for a different adventure today. On our activity tables, we found some play dough and art materials that we could work on. Lisa started putting the pieces for our face art. It was a great way for her to learn the parts of our face. She knew where to put the eyes, nose and mouth. She also put some hair on top and it looked even funnier than we expected. Haruto was very confident with his art work, he glued the parts on the location where he wanted it to be and he said that he also wanted to use the spatula all by himself when he did the pasting. Dominik was at the other table with the play dough, he was very quiet and he made some fish waffles again for everyone today.                 Our circle time was always fun. John, with his companion (the guitar), made music for us and we sang the songs we love in class. Today, we also counted how many kids were here at school and we realized that we were twelve. Our teachers said that we’re supposed to be only eleven. We saw that Hana was also here today. We missed her so much and we’re glad to have her again in our class.

We also counted how many times we tapped the tambourine. Our number today was twelve so we had to tap the tambourine for 12 times. Our teachers asked us to tap and say the numbers at the same time. It was fun because we were also learning our numbers with music. We loved playing our tambourines in the classroom. Kaia was a bit shy but she did it over and over again.

              We sang a new song called “Don’t forget to say PLEASE”, and then we read a story about Mr. Panda who wanted to hear the magic word “PLEASE” so that he could give the whole box of doughnuts. We had read this before but we just thought that it was nice how it was connected to the song that we sang with our teachers and friends.

After our circle time, visitor came to our class. It was Mikiko (Hana’s mom) and Kaho. That’s why Hana-chan was here because she will be doing some activities with us prepared by her mommy. We stayed in our circle and she took out an art work about Hina matsuri. It was very beautiful. We remembered that Taiga’s mom also helped us make this one. It was nice to do it again with Mikiko and Kaho.

Mikiko explained why we have Hana matsuri festival in Japan and she took out some wonderful illustrations of the story called “Why do we put up Hina dolls?” It was a story about the Bunny who would like to know more about this festival so he asked several friends and strangers about why we celebrate this event for the girls. We loved the story and the drawings were so colorful and attractive. We definitely had a great time sitting with them during class.

                Next, we went to our tables. And she showed us how to make origami hina matsuri. It was nice to see how colorful the paper and materials used in the art work. It was an awesome activity indeed!

                Hana, Mikiko, Kaho together with the Buds went back to our circle again and we sang a beautiful song “Thank You”! We were so happy to have them here in our class and we hope that they will continue to give us more activities like these. It was so splendid to see how parents put a lot of effort just to make our learning experience even greater at Ohana. Thank you so much again Hana, Mikiko and Kaho.

We went to the park today. The weather was a bit gloomy but it didn’t rain. The Buds were still active and energetic the whole time. Sofie and Kaia loved to go to the slides. Rupert would always point at the big slides and he would then ask his teachers to accompany him going down the slide.

                Thank you Ohana for another wonderful day for the Buds, we are all looking forward for tomorrow’s activity. Have a nice day!

Lots of love,

John, Sayaka and Maki