A snowy day in Tokyo

What fun it was today to be all snug inside our classroom watching the snowflakes fall from the sky. We watched through the windows and saw how the street, cars and everywhere turned from grey and black to white…….

 We had time to do many different activities in keeping with our theme for this month. Today we did some more “Shuji” and did the kanji for month and moon. We had to do two vertical lines and three horizontal lines. First Nanako held our hands and made the “real” kanji symbol and then we tried to make it all by ourselves. We did a great job. When we put this kanji together with the one that we did on Friday, we have the words New Year. We will put them together and hang them on bamboo when they are dry. The second activity that we did was learning how to fold origami paper. We tried to fold the square into a rectangle and then open it up again and fold it into another rectangle. We learnt the words “turn over” as we had to place the origami on the paper with the pattern face down. We learnt how to use our hand and fingers to try to smooth the paper carefully. Then our teachers continued folding the paper and made many cranes which Shelley will give to her friend who has asked people to make 1,000 paper cranes for her to send to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

We read a wonderful story called “Can you hug like a koala?” In the story which is interactive, we are asked whether we can “leap” like a frog; “stretch” like a tiger; “jump” like a rabbit; “hug” like a koala; “creep” like a mouse and “curl into a ball” like a squirrel. We did all of these things and also did some actions to a new tape with great songs on it. The first song is repetitive and we almost know all of the words. It is called “Peanut butter jelly”. We spoke about “Shimekazari” and that they are made with a circular shaped rope; we sang “Sing a long song” which is a song about the New Year; we tapped our knees and did many actions and said good morning in a few different languages; we walked forwards and froze and then did the same thing walking backwards and walking sideways.

Upstairs we also looked out of the window and watched the snow falling down making the world look white and clean. Nico, Beckett and Jenny spent time building together with the Kapla blocks. They all made tall constructions with the blocks and were fortunate enough that none of them fell over.

FJ tried to do “Shuji” and particularly loved doing the kanji for snake which is “hebi” in Japanese. Sofia worked at the table with the coloured blocks and patterned cards. The blocks come in different colours and shapes; there are hexagons; trapezoids; diamonds; squares; triangles; and octagons. You have to match the shapes onto the patterned cards and then can also design your own shape with the blocks.

 During library time, we read the book “Binky gets a car” which was about a boy who gets a pedal car for his birthday. He is not so sure how to drive and he is also not aware of the rules when you are driving and he crashes into many things. Today with all the snow, we think that even people who know how to drive, crashed into many things! We reviewed our sounds and letters “s, a, t, i, p and n”. We looked through the Jolly phonics books, looking for things beginning with these letters. We sang the song for each letter too e.g. “the snake is in the grass” and then looked at flashcards and tried to work out what the initial sound of each picture was. We practiced writing the lower case letters on small white boards. We really love learning and working and are doing amazing things in our class each day. We painted “hagoita” which are wooden bats used in a game over the New Year. First we played with them and tried to hit the “hane”, which is a small metal ball and a feather on the end and then we painted them with sparkly paint. This is the first layer of decorations on our “hagoita”.

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