Shinkansen in Japan

Today we welcomed Ayaka back to class from New York. We missed her a lot and are glad to have her back. She showed us some photos from the wedding and looked beautiful. Congratulations Ayaka and William! On the main table today we used small pegboards and little hollow beads. The beads are very small and are a good way to practice our fine motor skills. To put the beads on the small pegboards to make a picture we needed to be really careful with our fingers placing them in the right place. The beads are easily knocked out of place and we needed to really concentrate to complete the shapes. After the beads were all in place Darren used an iron and some special paper to make the beads all stick together. The beads soon melted together and we will put them on display tomorrow to show all our friends. Next to the beads Jennifer wanted to continue with the weaving activity using the colored yarn and beads. On the carpet today Gaby enjoyed playing with the toy animals and green mat. Kosei saw the large plastic mirror and decided to use the dominoes and the ball bearing while looking at himself in the mirror. Many of us found looking at our distorted reflection in the mirror fun and started to make funny faces to our friends. Jeremy pretended he was a pop star and posed for lots of photos with Jessica who was also dressed like a princess. So Cute!! After packing away the toys Jennifer’s mother Rie arrived to see Jennifer’s ‘Show & Tell’ and do a special Japanese International Month activity with us. Jennifer asked her friends to guess what she had brought and Adam guessed correctly, it was a book, two actually. The books were all about Shinkansen trains and Jennifer told us how she had borrowed these books from her brother William. She moved around and showed all her friends her favorite pages and then answered lots of questions. Jennifer’s favorite pages showed the ‘Doctor Yellow Shinkansen’ which repairs the tracks and checks there are no rocks on the track too. Jennifer also told us how she had been to Atami on a Shinkansen too. Thank you Jennifer it was a wonderful Show & Tell. We then all moved to the table so that Rie could introduce how to make a yellow Shinkansen onigiri using saffron rice and some cut seaweed. We got some rice and pushed it into a special Shinkansen mould to squeeze it into the right shape. We then added eyes, mouth and windows on the side to make our special Shinkansen onigiri. Thank you Rie, it was a wonderful experience for us and enjoyed eating them after our main snack today. In the park we enjoyed playing soccer and used the large plastic hoops to play a game where we threw the hoops from a distance and tried to get them over the top of a large yellow cone. In circle time we started to make a ‘Bye-Bye’ card for Tanaka Sensei (our gym class teacher). Tanaka Sensei’s last class is next Monday and we will all miss him. We drew pictures using colored pencils and markers which we know he will like. Attached to each page is also a small picture of each of us too. Have a great afternoon.