Preparing for Fathers Day

A rainy day in Tokyo means another exciting day at Ohana. We are wondering whether this is what they call summer in Tokyo because it really hasn’t felt like summer. Nevertheless, it is a fun summer at Ohana and we have almost completed our week of Japanese immersion. Downstairs, we are trying to stay in sync with our older friends upstairs but they can do a lot more things than we can so our teachers are helping us each day. Today we made a surprise for our dads and when we go home we will take our gifts with us and keep them until Sunday when it is Fathers Day. We think our dads will be really happy when they receive our gifts. We first decorated a piece of paper using our dot markers and wax crayons and then our teachers had to fold the page. Ayaka helped them as she found a guide on the internet and she took photos of the different steps.

  In our class some of our new friends are still getting used to our lovely classroom and the routine that we have each day. Each day we think that they are getting more and more comfortable and they know that our teachers love and care about them. We played with our lovely green play dough however it is becoming stickier and stickier, because of the humidity. Today our teachers rolled it in some flour and maybe tomorrow after it has spent the night in the refrigerator, it will be better tomorrow. Today we used the fishing rods with magnets on them and tried to pick up puzzle pieces with them. We were also curious about the plastic people, insects and birds.

We sang and danced and used musical instruments before we went downstairs to the MPR. We love the tunes and actions that we do when we listen to the Wiggles CD. We especially love the song when we walk, run, and jump. We also like to “shake our sillies out and wiggle our woggles away”. In the MPR we loved hitting the balloon into the air and the one of us tried to grab the ribbon and catch it. Koh kun is especially good at cleaning up at the end of our play time. He even put pieces of scrap paper into the garbage bin in the office.

Upstairs Noa started off her day making and decorating her shopping bag while Tomo, Beckett and Tokutaro played with the big box of cars. They got out the plastic ocean play mat and the road map to play on. Abiya, Lily and Olivia enjoyed using the large easels and drew on them with white board markers. Olivia said that she drew a rainbow. Momo and Noa became shop keepers at the table and they sold out all of the ice cream. We all love ice cream even if it is a rainy day. Ayaka has had some amazing ideas for us this week and we want to say a big “thank you” to her for all her preparation and for her kindness to us in class. We love her very much and wish that she would teach us more Japanese things next year in class.

When we played in the MPR, we learnt the names of fruit in Japanese together with the colours e.g. apple – ringo; melon – melon; grapes – budo etc. Ayaka said that a banana was kiro; grapes were murasaki; melon is midori; a ringo is aka; blueberries are ao; a momo is pink. Our fruit and vegetable game involved clapping. When Ayaka shouted out “ichigo” we clapped twice; when she shouted out “banana” we clapped twice and when she shouted out “onigiri”, there was no clapping because an “onigiri” is not a fruit or a vegetable.

We sang “Anato no namae wa”; “Okii no taiko”; “Hajimaru yo” which involves counting with our fingers and “Ippon bashi” which is similar to ‘Round and round the garden like a teddy bear’ in English. Our book was called “3 biki no Kodomo no hitsuji. It is a story about three sheep that were hungry and thirsty. They ate a lot and drank a lot and then fell asleep under a big tree. After dark they had to walk a long way to get home.

At the table we made necklaces using straws cut into pieces which we threaded onto string. Momo, Beckett, Sean, Sofia and Tomo were able to cut lots and lots of straws so that there were enough for all of us to use. Some of us mixed shiny beads with the straws. We played another game during the morning where we wore a necklace that had a picture attached to it. It was a bit like musical chairs. When Ayaka said the name of a fruit, we had to find a new seat as quickly as possible. Thanks for another exciting, fun Summer School day at Ohana.

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