Bonjour mes amis

We had a wonderful start to the week of Ohana Chefs/Ironchefs of Ohana and we welcomed our new friend Daiki, to our class. We think that he had a great day even though he was a little upset in the very beginning. He will be with us for the whole week of Ohana Chefs and his brother Kosei is upstairs.

Nanako prepared the most incredible selection of activities for cooking and learning for us, with Sayaka leading this week in our classroom. Together with the theme of cooking we will be focusing on learning about our senses. Sayaka read a book to us about the senses which was called “The Five Senses”. We have other senses however these are the main ones which are spoken about.

In the story, we looked at pictures of people looking with their eyes, smelling with their noses, hearing with their ears, tasting with their tongues and touching with their hands. Our activities that focused on our senses were related to smell and touch today. At our large table we had trays with lavender glitter salt and basil play dough. We loved the variety of interesting smells that wafted through our classroom and we also enjoyed the textures. The salt was grainy and a little bit rough while the play dough was soft and had an exquisite texture. We think that Nanako is the best play dough maker in the world!

We will keep the play dough and salt in the refrigerator during the summer holidays and hope that we will be able to use it again when we return for the start of the new school year in August.

The cooking activity today was making ‘crepe’ which is the french word for a pancake. A crepe is actually quite different from a pancake as it is usually very thin and it also usually doesn’t have sugar in it. The fillings on the pancake are what create the flavour and taste. You can get sweet ‘crepe’ and savoury ‘crepe’. Our ‘crepe’ today were filled with banana and sprinkles. We made the ‘crepe’ from scratch using flour, sugar, eggs, oil and milk. We helped mix the ingredients together and then cooked them in a pan. The smell made us all hungry for our snacks even though it was still early in the day.

We sampled them before our snack as they were lovely and warm and what do you think? Yes, of course, we loved eating them. Look at us here having a ‘crepe’ feast.

On the mat for our circle time, after reading the “Five Senses” to us, Sayaka showed us five containers. They were small glass containers with a lid and some holes in the lid section. Our task was to smell them and see if we could guess what they were. Nanako very cleverly put some black paper inside the glass jars so we could not see what was inside. Underneath them, there is a sticker with the names of the things that are inside. Not everything inside had a strong smell. In fact some things had no smell at all e. g. rice. The next interesting thing that we did was to look at coffee beans and smell them. We do not drink coffee so were not so familiar with this smell, even though many of our parents drink coffee. Then Sayaka showed us a machine called a grinder and she put the coffee beans inside it. Then she turned a handle and we heard a scratching noise. Many of us had a turn to rotate the handle and grind the coffee beans. When we had all finished grinding them, Shelley asked us where the coffee beans had gone as we could no longer see them. We said that they were inside the container. Well, when Sayaka opened up the grinder, there were no more coffee beans. We said that they were crumbled; they were broken; they had disappeared. We smelt the ground coffee beans and once again, were not so familiar with their smell. It was great fun doing this activity and when we were sitting on the floor, ready to go outside, Koh chan, looked up at the pencil sharpener that also has a handle and said: “Look a grinder”. He was right except the pencil sharpener is for sharpening pencils. Shelley then demonstrated to us how you sharpen a pencil with it.

Another fun thing we did today was to learn some French. Nanako’s idea with the week of Ohana Chefs is to include countries and make something specific to five different countries on the five different days. She included some songs and words as well. Today we learnt a song (which Shelley adapted) called “Bonjour mes amis” which means ‘good morning my friends”. We sang it and then learnt to say “Je m’appelle………….” and we said our name. We also learnt to say ‘wash our hands’ which is “laver les mains”. We counted from one to ten and had a board with all of the numbers on which we went through one by one. Counting in french goes like this “un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix”.

Just before lunch time, we had a farewell party for Zachary as he is leaving our school. We spoke about feeling sad but also feeling happy, since we enjoyed being friends at Ohana and we wish him good luck at his new school. We sang “When you’re happy and you know it” and we selected actions. We learnt a new action today from Vincent. He told us that we must do “checking” so we checked to see that everything was okay. Michaela told Zachary that she loved him and some one hugged him and some of our teachers said lovely words to him. His mum brought us gluten free cookies and we gave him a beautiful card.

Love always Shelley, Hisami, Ayaka and Sayaka.