Taiko Workout

We hope you all had a good golden weekend break and enjoyed the beautiful warm weather. We had a special Taiko morning today at the city office hall with Moko Sensei. Before we left for the Taiko session we had our usual free play session and activities in the classroom. On the carpet we saw the jungle artwork and play area which we completed last week. Inside the artwork we saw the butterflies, tigers and gorillas we have made together hiding in the jungle leaves. Eito, Gaby, Nile, Marc and Lucinda all played in the box with their friends. On the table we did some drawing on a special item for our mummies on Friday’s Mother’s Day. The items have our face photo on them and we will give them out to our mummies on Friday this week. On the free art table Eito’s mother was doing some artwork with the children but it was a secret project, something for the teachers we heard but the childen are very good at keeping secrets. Wesley decided he would like to go skiing and put on the practice skis and held the poles to practice. Soon it was time to clear away the toys and then Nanako helped us with the calendar in both English as well as Japanese. After snack time we read a book together called ‘Caps for Sale’ which was a funny book about a man selling caps which are stolen by monkeys who then refuse to give them back until he throws down his own cap and they copy him. We all put on our Ohana red and green T-Shirts to walk to the Taiko session and it took us only about 15 minutes to climb the hill and arrived early for the session. We could hear all our friends in Petals Class drumming in the hall too. We used the time to prepare ourselves by making sure we drank some water and then adjusted our bandanas correctly. Soon it was time to enter the hall and saw all the drums arranged in a big circle. Moko Sensei was waiting for us and we soon got into the rhythm and drummed solid for about 40 minutes with a final Taiko performance by Moko San, Kaitlyn (Alexis’s mother) and Reina (Lanah’s mother) as well as Shiori (Riko’s mother) who played facing the main drummers. It was a great way to spend a morning and we were very hot and sticky by the end. Thank you Moko Sensei for organizing this for us and making it such a special event for the children. Have a great afternoon and we hope to see many of you at the Mothers Day Breakfast on Friday morning at drop off time. All our love, Darren, Ayaka & Nanako