Cold and rainy outside; warm and sunny inside

We sang some Japanese songs in music time today and they all combined many actions. The first one was “musu’nde hira’ite” which was like “Open them, shut them” and the other one was “Gu, shokki, pade” which is “Rock, scissors, paper” in English. We opened up a tin that had some vegetables and food inside them. There was an onigiri, carrot - ninjin, cherries - sakuranbo, mushrooms - shitake, burdock – gobo, lotus root – renkon, and butter burr – fuki. Hisami said that she was going to have all of these things for her obento today. After we sang it one time, we listened to the song on a CD. It started off with the sound of the taiko drums. We played the drums, copying the rhythm of the music and using our hands like taiko sticks. We all helped make Hisami’s obento by putting the vegetables and other food into her box. We tried to remember all of the Japanese words and if we didn’t know them, Hisami and our friends told us the name in English. When we had packed away all of the food, we counted all of our fingers on one hand. Hisami had a glove on her hand and her thumb had a picture of a daddy; the second finger was mummy; then sister, brother and baby. When we came to baby, we spoke about Nanako in Buds Class and some of us knew that she is going to have a baby.

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We know that she is Luka’s mummy.

Each time we sang, these are the words that we sang.

“Where is ………, here I am, here I am,

How are you today, very well I thank you

Run away, run away”.

Some of us had a turn to wear the glove while our friends sang the song again.

At the tables, we completed some of our art experiences and started one new interesting one. Yesterday we told you that we shaved red and green wax crayons; well today we used them by scooping some onto wax paper and ironing the wax paper. When we held each of our creations up to the light, they looked really beautiful. You could see the colours and patterns that the wax crayon shavings made through the wax paper, after they had been ironed. Some of us held the iron together with our teacher to melt the colours on our picture. Afterwards we put a frame around the pictures. We will do some more tomorrow so that all of our friends can complete them.

We used green and red paper to make the frame as these are the colours of the festive season. We had to hold the iron carefully together with one of our teachers as it was quite hot. Each of us made a completely different design inside our frame. Sometimes the green and red mixed together and made a brownish colour.

We listened to a story called “The Big Red Hen and the little lost egg”. It was a sad story in the beginning however at the end it was really happy. The red hen had no babies and was really sad because she went to bed all alone, with no one to hug and say “I love you”. One day she came across an egg and her friends, the goose, moorhen, duck and turkey told her to look after it, until it hatched. So she sat on the egg, day and night for 20 days and then……….she was overjoyed because the egg started to crack and guess what came out…..a little chicken. Now she had someone to say “I love you” to every night.

Thanks for a great day of fun and learning and even though it is cold and rainy outside, we had plenty of warmth in our classroom; with the heater and with hugs and love.

Love always the children in Petals Class.