Happy Tanabata, everyone! Our bamboo leaves have been decorated with lots of colorful lanterns and wishes. We were so eager to hear the story behind Tanabata. For our story time, Vieda told us the Tanabata story while showing us pictures. We found it interesting that the princess’ name means “weaver princess” (Orihime) because she was so good at weaving. Looking at the picture, Ke said, “The princess makes clothes, and the boy (Hikoboshi) takes care of lots of animals”. Unfortunately, after getting married, K noticed something. He said, “They are sitting under the tree.”. Da added, “Music! Is so loud!” as he pointed out that Hikoboshi was playing under the tree and not looking after the animals!
We felt so sad when we learned that they were separated and would only be allowed to see each other only once a year, on the 7th of July. According to the legend, on a clear night on July 7th, we might be able to see groups of stars that look like Orihime and Hikoboshi. On hearing this, Ke raised his hand and said, “ Daddy is so mean. He is doing a bad thing by putting a river to separate the two of them”. M also added, “But when it is raining on that day (July 7th), they cannot see each other”.
When we think about Tanabata, we cannot help but to talk about the stars as well. We had a fascinating discussion about stars and here are some of the things we learned:
Vieda: Do stars come out in the sky at nighttime only?
K: No, because at daytime too they are out. But the sun is too bright, so we don’t see the stars in the morning.
Mi: The sun is the biggest star. I know that!
Ak: What? So, the correct answer is we have stars in the morning, too?
Vieda: That’s right! What color/s are they?
Mi: I think they’re yellow.
K: Orange
R: Blue
K: Yellow.
Well, we were surprised to know that there are white, yellow, orange, and red stars because some stars are hotter than the others. When Ak heard this, he said, “Wow that’s cool!”.
MORNING ACTIVITIES
Our morning was full of activities that help develop our fine motor skills. Some of us were in a serious mode as they worked on completing a puzzle. We tried our best to pick up the pieces and move them to their places and we felt so proud and satisfied when we finally completed the puzzle! Some of us were focused on making things on the hammer and nail set and geometric shape pictures. All these activities help us to use our small muscles on our hands, wrists, and fingers. It is amazing to note how our brain (which fascinates us so much when we talked about in Flowers!) coordinates between what we need to do and what we are seeing. We had so much fun playing with these toys!
We felt so lucky to be able to go to Step Park again today! We had fun playing Duck, Duck, Goose with our friends
BALLOON OLYMPICS
We love balloons! Seeing balloons in the room made us feel so excited! When we heard that we were going to play balloon tennis, our friends shared:
K: I play tennis, so I know how it works.
Ke: Sometimes there are four people playing because it’s like doubles.
Ak: I see it on TV and only two are playing tennis.
Mi: I don’t play tennis but at home, I have a ping pong set and golf set.
We had two teams and played several rounds for balloon tennis playing singles, doubles and even triples! The next round, we played as a team. Each team had 4 balloons each. When the music was played, each team should keep their balloons in the air. When the music stopped, we had to put all the balloons in the two red boxes as fast as we could. We were giggling and laughing while hitting the balloons so they would stay up in the air. At the end of the game, winners were announced. As it is in any games, there would be winners and losers. The important thing about playing games is being able to stay nice with each other regardless of the game results. So, at the end of the game, just like the professional tennis players, we all lined up and had elbow bump and said to each other, “It was a nice game!”.
Love,
Flowers XOXO