Shichigosan

Many of us had the opportunity to dress up in kimono and hakama today in celebration of Shichigosan. Ayaka and Kumi, Shoko’s mum helped us dress in these special clothes today and we took many photos which our teachers will look at carefully and paste one of them inside our workbooks/portfolios. We felt so beautiful and handsome when we were wearing the kimono and hakama and are looking forward to going to the shrine on Friday to pray for our good health and longevity. Ayaka read a story to us about “Shichigosan” called “Shichigosan no omairi”. We learnt the Japanese words for seven, five and three which are shichi, goh and san. We learnt the words for the clothes that we were wearing e.g. kimono for girls and “hakama” for boys. On our feet we wore “tabi” which are socks that have a toe separation for our big toe and other toes and we also wore “zori” on our feet. Zori are like thongs that people wear in summer when they go to the beach.

 After all of us had been dressed in traditional clothes, we went to the activity table and found the pink recycled paper. Many of us said that it felt soft and cold and like a pillow. We spoke about there being pink animals on the grasslands and realised that there was one. It was not a pig and it was not a pink monkey. What could there be on the grasslands that is pink? We researched this by looking at books and “bingo”. We discovered a picture of a flamingo. Our teachers put out a variety of art materials including the pink paper clay. The art materials included coloured matchsticks, foam, plastic shapes, pipe cleaners etc. We set about making our flamingos. We need to let the paper clay dry more so that we can add googly eyes etc. to them. On our way to the park, we started singing “zo san” which is a Japanese song all about an elephant.

Downstairs, we played with plasticine and are still managing to keep the colours separate at the moment. Our teachers are anticipating the colours mixing together and becoming a mooshy, greeny brown colour. We also played with number puzzle cards and plastic numbers. Our teachers are preparing for the meeting next Monday by checking on certain of our skills. Yesterday and today, they were looking at our number skills. We showed them how high we can count when counting objects; we showed them which number symbols we recognised and also how we were able to match a plastic number with the number written on a card. Then we played a visual memory game together on the mat. We named five objects that Shelley showed us viz. a ball, a pair of scissor, a car, a pen and a fish. We counted them all. Shelley took a piece of fabric and covered them all so that we couldn’t see them. She put her hand underneath the fabric and then we couldn’t see her hand either. We counted one; two and three and then she whipped the fabric away while hiding an object under it. We had to look very carefully and see what was missing……………..and of course we did. We named what was missing each time and then she did something silly. She put the fabric over her head and said what’s missing? We said: “Shelley’s missing”.

 Vincent in our class loves moving the chairs around every day and today he made them into a train. We all found a seat on the train and sat together going on a journey to California. Ava chose California as she said that there are lots of animals and she told us that she is going there for Christmas. We sang “Puffer train”. Earlier on we read the story about the “Little engine that could”; all about a train that broke down and how another little one helped it over the moutain through perseverance and determination. It was a full, fun day at Ohana today and tomorrow the rest of us will dress in “hakama” and “kimono”.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Ayaka, Nanako, Sabine, Goh, Liezel and Christine.