Rainy Tanabata and the cloud dough

DSCF7745Hooray!!! Finally, a cloudy morning!!! Many of us were very excited to go to the park. This morning, Petal class friends started to ‘sign in’, just like the kids from Flowers class do. Some of us found it challenging to hold a pencil so our teachers helped us to write our first name. We also saw two new faces in our class. Their names are Lena and Jones. Kai, even before they knew each other’s name, started to play with Jones right away. When Lena came to visit yesterday afternoon, she was admiring our sun catcher. So when she saw the muffin pan and beads on table, she started to line up the beads in the muffin pan. She was so careful and was concentrated to do it for over 20 DSCF7743minutes! On the bigger table, we saw two bowls, some flour, some vegetable oil and a bottle of baby lotion. DSCF7746Maki asked us if we wanted to make some cloud dough and Hana was the first one to shout “Me!” So, Hana and Jones sat at the table and helped the teacher pour the flour and vegetable oil in the bowl before mixing them. Jones used both hands to hold and pour the flour in the cup very nicely. After a while, Kai and Lena joined in and helped us mix the contents too.

DSCF7753Our teacher offered us to touch and feel the texture, but Jones said he didn’t want to touch it because his hands might get dirty. Lena was very brave to stickDSCF7754 her whole hand in it and from what we saw, I think she enjoyed feeling the cloud dough. When we finished making the cloud dough with vegetable oil, it was time to make some cloud dough with baby lotion. Dominik, Kenichi, Gabby, and Taiyo joined in with Lena and helped us pouring flour and baby lotion in the bowl and then mix them nicely. Before we measure the baby lotion, our teacher let us DSCF7758smell it first. It smelled very nice, and some of us couldn’t help but mutter “it smells nice…” with a smile on our faces.DSCF7769

Baby lotion cloud dough was much softer compared to vegetable oil cloud dough, which was drier and kept crumbling in our hands. Kai and Arata said they liked the vegetable oil cloud dough better, but Gabby enjoyed the soft and smooth texture of baby oil cloud dough.

DSCF7775Our teacher read a Japanese book called “Ame-no Bouya, Florino(The rain boy, DSCF7776Florino)”. It was a boy who collected all the different types of sound of raindrops to make beautiful music from it. All the people who were complaining about the rain were now looking forward for the rainy day to hear the music that Florino brought to them.

When we got to the park, we saw lots of BBs on the ground again! Jeremy, Dominik, and Hana started to collect them as soon as we got to there. Kai had DSCF7777two shovels in his hands and was trying to make a hole on the ground. This was very hard to do because the ground was much harder compared to the sand pit. DSCF7778Lena, Jessica, Hana, and Kenichi started to make some cake with the sand. We all enjoyed being out in the park for the first time in a week! But it didn’t take so long for the rain to come back. I think the rain likes us a bit too much and we feel that the rain wants to play with us as well.

It was a little bit sad to leave the park so early. But on the way back, we heard the raindrops playing music on the leaves. We wanted to collect the sound like what Florino did, but we didn’t quite know how. And the cool rain felt nice on our steaming skin from running around the park.

DSCF7779Our teacher read the Tanabata story for us again because today is Tanabata day! For many of us, this was our first time to hear the story, so everybody’s eyes were locked on to Kamishibai. We hope the two star-crossed lovers are able to see each other above the thick rainy clouds.

Have a great evening everyone!

All our love, Maki, Liezel, Goh and Bill

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