Paper plate masks
Today we welcomed mum Nakaba, in our classroom. Shelley asked all of us if Nakaba was our mum and we all said no, except her son. He smiled! Nakaba prepared some special things for us to do, in preparation for “Setsubun” which is a festival celebrated tomorrow, February 3rd each year. Setsubun is a time when people throw “mame” and chase away the bad things from their homes, so that only good things can come to them in the year ahead. Nakaba told us about the “oni” and that we throw beans at the “oni” because he doesn’t like beans, so he runs away. We will throw our beans tomorrow. Today we counted them and put them inside our special containers and then………………yes, we ate them! Yummmmm, they were so delicious. We counted the same number of beans as the number of years since we were born. We ate the beans so quickly and then filled our cups, until they were all gone! Our first activity was making “oni” masks. We noticed on the board in our classroom that there are a number of different masks with “oni” faces on them. Some are made from paper and others from papier mache which is paper and glue that gets hard when it dries. Our masks were made from paper plates. Nakaba cut diamond shaped holes which were the eyes and we had different cut out shapes to paste on to the paper plate for the rest of the facial features. Then we used coloured yarn and made hair for the “oni”. Our masks are really unique and we sat together for a photo with the ones that we made. Shelley asked us to wear them, but some of us were a little scared, so we held them up to our faces or in our hands. It was fun to make the masks and we want to say a big thank you to Nakaba for spending a special morning with us. We love it when our mums come and visit the school and do an activity with us. Thanks Nakaba!
It was cold outside so instead of going to the park we went down to the second floor and played there which many of us have not ever done. One of us was very excited as he had asked Shelley: “What is downstairs? Can I play there?” He was a chef today and spent a long time cooking and preparing food for his classmates. One of the girls spoke to her mum on her “mobile phone” and she sounded just like a real mum talking on the phone! One of the boys loves the Mickey Mouse puzzle so he did this many times while another discovered train puzzles with many pieces in them so he chose to do one of them. He wanted to do the “shinkansen” but it had 88 pieces. So he chose another one with 54 pieces and he will try the “shinkansen” another time. We loved our time on the second floor and we will go back there again one day soon.
In our morning circle we sang our “Hello” song and “It’s good to see that………here”. Afterwards we sang our love song “Love is something” and the most fun song that we did with all of our friends was called “Give your friend a massage”. Yesterday we spoke about what we could do for the people who we love and Shelley said that sometimes giving them a massage is a real treat. We sat in a line, one behind the other and placed our hands on the person’s shoulders, who was sitting in front of us; then we sang the song and massaged their shoulders, heads, necks and backs. It felt really good. Unfortunately the person, who was sitting at the back of the line, didn’t have anyone to massage them so maybe we can swop places when we sing the next time, so that everyone can have a turn. The song goes like this:
Give your friend a massage it’s a lovely thing to share Give your friend a massage, it’s so nice to show you care Rubbing, rubbing, rubbing so, stroking, stroking gently so Head and shoulders, neck and back, pressing, pressing just relax Maaaaaaasssssssaaaaaagggggeeeee!
Thanks for a great day and for all the fun things we learnt.
Love Shelley and Darren