Purim Sameach......

Today we missed Darren, but we had so many lovely teachers taking care of us. We had all our regular teachers and Yuko, Darren’s wife who is learning about our routine and what we do each day when we are at school. Shelley taught us in the upstairs class and we were so lucky because all of our friends from downstairs came to join us for the story of Purim. This is a Jewish festival that was celebrated yesterday and it tells the story of Purim. It is an interesting story about a place called Shushan where King Achashverosh lived. He did silly things as the kind and when his wife Vashti left him, he went in search for another queen. He found a lovely girl called Esther who didn’t have a mum and dad, however she lived with her very kind uncle whose name was Mordechai. Esther and Mordechai were Jewish and Achashverosh was not. When Mordechai gave permission for Esther to marry the king, he too went to live in the palace. In many stories from long ago there was always a person of not such good character and this story is no different. This person’s name was Haman and whenever we said his name, Yossi shook his rattles or in Hebrew they are called “ra’ashanim”.

 Haman wanted to hurt the Jewish people and when the king heard this, he got rid of Haman and he was never ever seen again. There are often gory details in the stories from long ago however Shelley never included them when she told us this one. In order to celebrate, people dress up in dress ups, they shake their rattles, listen to the story of Purim and eat Hamantashen. Hamantaschen are shaped in a triangle and in Hebrew they are called “oznei Haman” which means Haman’s ears. Haman wore a three cornered hat and it is said that he had pointy ears too. We sang “La kove sheli”. “My hat it has three corners”, “Chag Purim” and then we went to the table to have our snack. After we had eaten our healthy snack we all had a Hamantaschen filled with chocolate…..yummmm! We also had a turn to shake the rattles. We listened to some Purim songs which Yossi’s older sister played for us. We learnt how to say thank you in Hebrew which is ‘todah raba’ and after we sang our snack time song, Yossi said his prayer in Hebrew. We want to thank Yossi and his family for their generosity in preparing the delicious treats for us and for coming to share this special time at Ohana.

We all learnt about Hina Matsuri through a story that Ayaka told us using a “kamishibai”. In the story there were two mice who wanted to make Ohinasama and Odairisama; so they went to the hen and asked her for two eggs which they carried home carefully. They put origami paper onto the eggs, made faces and dressed them carefully but then they heard a noise. Suddenly out of the eggs came two chickens all dressed as Ohinasama and Odairisama. It was a cute story.

We reviewed some shapes and looked at how we could make a circle into two equal parts. Jennifer remembered that they are called semi-circles. When you fold a circle in half the two equal parts are called semi-circles. We recognized a square that has four equal sides; a rectangle that has two long sides and two short ones and we learnt one new shape; a column. It is almost like a circle but it is long like a tube and has a circular shape on each end.

Tomorrow in both classes we will start doing activities for Hina Matsuri and we will be using a paper plate folded in half for this. We completed our hearts for our friends upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs we did some for Nico and downstairs we did some for William. We missed some of our friends in both classes as they were not well and we hope that they will return to school tomorrow.

Outside we had a great time with everyone in the park at the same time. Many of us came down the slide holding hands or putting our arms around each other.

We ran around getting rid of our excess energy and even though it was so cold and windy, we were happy to be out in the fresh air. It was a great day and we had so much fun at school.

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