Koinobori & Kabuto making

When we arrived this morning we saw lots of exciting activities on the table. We saw the second Koinobori flag on the table with lots of paint markers, glue and fabric. We started off by adding some colour to the tail of the fish using the paint markers and then started to cut the fish scales from fabric. Ayaka showed us some pictures of koinobori in a book and we decided that it would be nice to use blue for today’s koinobori. The one we made yesterday was red and so we thought another color would look nice. We also used some cardboard cut to resemble fish scales and used these to draw around with the paint markers. Both of the koinobori look great and we hung them from the classroom balcony. Please take a look when you come for pick up today! On the second table was our giant crocodile model made from cardboard tubes. Today we started to add the teeth, eyes and eyelids. We used some Styrofoam spheres for the eyes but they were white and we needed to color them black. We used two toothpicks to hold the spheres so that we could paint all of the eyes. We then used a green paint marker to color the card eyelids. Once the eyes were dry we put the eyes on the crocodile with the eyelids. We next added lots of teeth to the crocodile’s jaws using some white Styrofoam packing which we dipped in some white glue. We were very surprised to see that the Styrofoam teeth attached to the upper jaw without falling off. On the carpet we also noticed our jungle artwork folded into a rectangle with the jungle vines hanging across the front. The artwork is finished and is now an interactive piece which we could climb inside. It was fun for us to climb into the box area through the vines and look at all the butterflies, tigers and gorilla hiding in the jungle with us. Also on the carpet Alexis and Jessica built a wooden block tower nearly as tall as themselves. Kosei helped Nile with the moves on the class chessboard and although there didn’t appear to be a winner it was still lots of fun. After packing away the toys we headed for the park with our hats and water bottles. It was nice and warm in the park and Alexis and Jessica watered the pansies in the Ohana garden there. Alexis also helped clear away the dead flower heads from the pansies which should help them grow. We didn’t have very long at the park as we had a special make up gym class today with Miyashita sensei. We started the session with our warm up stretches and jumps. We tried the bridge pose and were amazed to see how much we have all improved. Nile is especially flexible and loves to show us how good she is at this. We then did some rolling somersaults and skipping around one of the class cushions. We then played some color recognition games where Miyashita Sensei called out some traffic light colors in Japanese and when we heard the color red we had to move quickly onto the mat in the middle before he could catch us. Ayaka then read a great Japanese big book story (Kamishibai) to us in circle time called ‘OmbuKoinobori’ which means Koinobori on your back. One of the pictures showed in the kamishibai was of Samurai. Ayaka reminded us that we looked at Samurai yesterday and that they were wearing special hats called Kabuto. We then made our own newspaper kabuto by folding it on the floor area and then we moved to the table to decorate them with paint markers. We took a group picture together with our class Koinobori. There were only a few of us in today and we miss our friends and hope to see them next week. Have a great weekend & golden week break