Happy Friday! What a wonderful week we had after the winter vacation. We are glad to meet new friends and welcome back our friends from vacation. We wrapped up our discussion about the traditions that are being done to celebrate the Japanese New Year. Our wall is now decorated with our beautiful daruma dolls! Perhaps, in the future we will be able to express our wishes and goals as we draw the eyes of our daruma doll😊 Please read on to hear how fabulous our Friday had been!
MORNING ACTIVITIES
Kakizome, which means “first writing” in the new year, is one of the Japanese New Year traditions that we had today. We were surprised to see a rather unusual ink in a black inkstone called “suzuri”. We were quite hesitant to do kakizome at first. We looked at the inkstone and the paintbrush as well. They were new to us! Once we tried doing our kakizome, we found it quite interesting. We were able to write different shapes and lines easily with this ink. We had lots of fun! For our next kakizome, perhaps we can try writing a Japanese character!
We also enjoyed playing on the light table with colorful shapes. We were fascinated to see the different colors reflected on the light table. We even tried putting the shapes over our eyes and surprised to see that our friends “turned” into the same color as the shapes😊
SPIN and SHINE with Maryna
Today’s spin and shine with Maryna was filled with dancing using shakers and colorful scarves. We enjoyed singing along while moving our bodies to the rhythm. We can’t wait to have our next class with Maryna!
CIRCLE TIME
After our attendance activity, we had an engaging story with a lift-the-flap book called Who’s Making that Smell? by Stephen Cartwright. Each page brought excitement as to where the smell was coming from. We got excited to see animals that we can recognize. The story also helped us to say, “Not me” and “Open please”. Here’s our interesting conversation:
Ri: Monkey
Ta: Door
Vieda: Who’s making the smell?
Ta: Not Taiga!
Ri: Hippo
No: Not me!
Ta: Stinky smell
Ta: Doggy
Em: Not me!
Ri: No
Ri: Open please! Panda!
Ri: Knock, knock! Giraffe.
Em: Cake
Ta: Not me!
Ta sometimes smells something stinky and he says, “Stinky!” while covering his nose. Perhaps next time, we can say, “not me” or “it’s me” when we hear him or our friends say it😊
Have a lovely weekend!
Love,
Buds XOXO