Otsukimi
When we arrived at school this morning, the rain was coming down in a light sprinkle which stopped after a short time. We were really lucky because we were able to go and have time in the park as well as do gymnastics. One of our favourite things to do in the park is climb the structure where the slide is; using the climbing wall, the step ladder or the wall with spaces for our feet. Luckily our teachers had a towel because it had rained. There were big puddles on the top and 
bottom of the slide so they wiped the top of them both and we could slide happily without getting wet.
In our gymnastics class with Tanaka sensei, we started off the lesson saying “Ohayo gozaimasu, yoroshiku onegaishimasu”. Then we did a warm up lesson to stretch our bodies so that our muscles were loose and our joints flexible, for all the different movements that we were going to do. You can see how much fun just the warm up was! We 
went through some of the things that we had learned last week e. g. sitting in the different positions and some of the exercises that we did during our warm up were similar to ones we did last week as well. Today we used our circular cushions quite a lot. We walked around the room and when Tanaka sensei blew his whistle, we had to jump on one of them; and balance! We walked on the cushions just like we would walk on stepping stones; we crawled on the cushions like caterpillars or animals of our choice; we walked around the room and when we heard the whistle we had to find a partner and do a “Hi 5” with them; we walked around the cushions and when we heard the whistle blow, we had to again find 
a friend but this time, we had to shake hands with them and the last fun one that we did was to walk around and then hug a friend when the whistle blew. Tanaka sensei makes our classes fun and he explains everything carefully to us so that we understand; even though he speaks mostly Japanese. He can say some English words but we understand everything.
During the morning we celebrated “Otsukimi” which is full moon (tonight) by listening to a story about the full moon and what happens. “Otsukimi” is a time when the Autumn/Fall moon is honoured by doing certain rituals 
e. g. making “odango”. In our story that Hisami read to us, there was a rabbit on the moon pounding “mochi” so that he could eat “odango” and so we had an activity where we made a scene that is related to “Otsukimi”.
We cut out a shape of a bowl and a moon all by ourselves and pasted them onto a piece of paper. The bowl was shaped like a slice of the moon and the moon that we cut out was circular in shape. The background that we used was a dark colour so that it represented the time of day, when the moon is in the sky; which is night time. Then we took a round shaped object and put white paint on it and printed “mochi/odango” onto the plate. We stamped the 
white paint onto the space above the bowl. We made a rabbit using our finger tips and red paint. In order to complete the picture, when we were in the park, we collected some tall grass to symbolize “susuki” which is tall pampas grass. Some people also have “kuri” at these times which are chestnuts. This time of year in the Japanese calendar is also a time to welcome Autumn/Fall.
In fact, “Otsukimi” time is a time for moon viewing but since it is raining we don’t think that anyone in Tokyo will be able to see the moon tonight!
We spent some time doing more jigsaw puzzles during free play. Koh chan did one entire 48 piece puzzle all by himself. Some of us prefer to do them as a team however our friends who are really good at puzzles, seem to take charge of them, and complete them before we have even had a chance to help. Our teachers are going to be setting up tables with puzzles of varying degree of difficulty so we can all experience success with them.
At the other activity table we played with rice and tried to fill plastic cups by scooping the rice with our tiny coloured plastic spoons. We also love playing with the open magnetic shapes. Having centers during the early morning helps us focus on different areas of our learning e. g. numbers, letters etc freely and we also then have the freedom to create our own play in these areas.
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.