Aromatic Friday

The last day of the week and we think that if we had to give today a name, we would call it “Aromtic Friday”. You probably are wondering why? Well, we can explain here. Last year we had a programme called “My dad is good at……” or “My mom is good at….” Our mums and dads were invited to come to our classes and show us something that they are good at. We had an interesting array of skills and fun things that our parents did with us. While we have not yet advertised this programme, Bill Campbell, Ava and Lilian’s dad, jumped at an opportunity to show us what he is good at. He came to school today to both Ava and Lilian’s classes and demonstrated his skills with different smells. When he introduced himself, he told us that he is good at “Smelling wine, tasting wine and drinking wine”. Wow, we thought, this is a lot of things to be good at for one person.

So here is Bill’s wonderful lesson that he did with us.

He told us that the most important part of his job is smelling. He showed us a wine glass; poured a liquid into the glass that looked like red wine; swirled it around in the glass and then he put his nose into the glass and took a deep breath in through his nose. He said that maybe some of us have seen our parents do this at home, when they drink wine. He asked us if we could guess how many smells there are in the world and of course, we couldn’t guess. He told us that there are 10,000 smells. Bill then showed us 13 containers with different things inside them. We counted 13 and this was the beginning of our “smelling session”. Bill encouraged us to close our eyes and smell as this would make our ability to smell, a lot stronger. It is not easy for us to “not look” at something; especially when we are encouraged not to look! So most of us peeped inside the containers and tried to guess the different smells. Bill explained to us that some smells are good; some smells are not so good; some smells are from inside our homes; some are from outside; some smells are morning smells; some smells tell us about dangerous things and some smells evoke no really feeling at all. The things that we smelled today were lemon, strawberry, soap, onion, rosemary, coffee, toast, beans, burnt matches, provolone cheese, soil, leather and chocolate. We all looooooved the chocolate smell and could identify it easily. Bill also showed us a chart that was circular in shape. It has many bright colours on it which represent the map of the inside of our noses. Certain smells were grouped together in the same colour e. g. cabbage, skunk and garlic were grouped in a bright blue colour while honey, soy sauce and chocolate were grouped in yellow. We want to say a huge thank you to Bill for coming to our class today to teach us about smelling in such a fun way. “Aromatic Friday” was a fabulous day!

Hisami read us the story called “Polar Bear, Polar Bear what do you see”. It was not a giant book like our new “Brown Bear” one however we love these stories so much, we don’t mind how big the book is!

At the activity tables, we had our sensory play with rice and we also threaded beads. Some of us threaded beads all the way to the end while some of us only wanted to do a few. Our teachers always encourage us to do our best, just like the saying in Japanese, “isho kenmay”. We also did an experiment in “Still Life” with shells, bark, and pine cones. Hisami suggested that we try it again using things that we can identify with and recognize more readily e. g. fruit.

Today we had a fantastic conversation on the mat, in the morning. Shelley asked us the following question:

“What are you?” and some of us answered that we were three years old. Shelley then framed the question slightly differently and said:

“Are you a book? Are you a carpet?” to which we all laughed out loud.

“We are not a carpet” many of us said. Where was this questioning going? Then Shelley asked us: “Am I a book?” and we said: “No, you are a girl”.

Oh, so some of us are girls and some of us are boys and together we are people. Another question: “What is a person?”

Michaela: “A person walks”.

Miyu: “A person eats”.

Now we had lots of things to say.

“How does a person walk?”

As a group: “With legs”

“What else has legs?”

“A dog”

“Animals”

“What about a chair?”

Michaela: “A chair has legs but it doesn’t walk.”

And then Bill arrived for our “Aromatic Friday” session. We love having these conversations as they make us think and develop our language and thinking together. We look forward to chatting again on Monday. We hope you all have a great weekend and our friends who were sick, return all strong and healthy then.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.