Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi

We were so happy to see Olivia and her mum Christina this morning. At last they came back to Tokyo after spending a long time in America with Olivia’s grandma. We are glad that they are back and even though it took Olivia some time to settle and play with us, she soon joined in and chatted to us. She kept her jacket on when she was inside in the beginning and did all of the activities with us. When we came back from the park, she took her jacket off just like we all did. And then of course, she had a good sleep as her body is still on American time. We think that Olivia’s dad is sooooo happy that she and her mum are back too!

“Oni wa soto

Fuku wa uchi”

We celebrated Setsubun today by eating the same number of beans as our age plus one. Our teachers had to eat so many for their own good luck for the year ahead. Downstairs, we were in the middle of singing our “Hello” song and we thought that we had sung to everyone and then Nanako sang: “What is your name?” and Shelley walked in with an oni mask on and sang: “My name is oni!” Lily was a little scared and so was Allie, so Shelley lifted the mask up so that they could see her face. We all had a turn to put the mask on and pretend that we were an oni…..

We learnt how to say “Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi”. Then we counted the correct number of beans that we needed to eat and we ate them. Most of us liked them but some of us didn’t.

As part of our activities at the tables today, we coloured in “oni” masks and then we decorated heart shaped cards. These are for a very special occasion that is coming soon on our calendar. It is called “Valentine’s Day” and as the week evolves you may here more about what we are doing for it. We used a selection of cupcake holders in gold, red and with hearts on them. Some of us cut them into little pieces; some of us pasted the entire cupcake holder onto the heart card and we also drew on the cards with pink, red and sparkly markers.

In our circle time, our teachers who were Nanako, Liezel and Sabine today because Shelley was very busy at our new school, they asked us about love and who do we love. We said all of our friends names and then they asked us why we love our friends. This concept is quite hard for us to understand fully and we couldn’t really find the words in answer to the questions. Then Nanako read “I love my mummy” which we loved listening to. Tomorrow we will talk more about love in class.

Upstairs, we are still enjoying fantasy and dramatic play and FJ, Marie and Jamie dressed up in dress up clothes. The raccoon, dragon and wolf were popular puppets this morning. Sofia spent a long time working at the activity table with the felt boards on it. She used up almost all of the pieces on a number of boards.

Beckett spent a long time playing with the train tracks and actually landed up in the library with them, as he built them so long. We also played with the Kinex pieces and built wands and cars. They are quite complicated to use and we were able to work out how to join the long sticks together.

We read “The Little Red Train” in the library.

Ayaka told us all about “Setsubun” and what it means. She told us that you throw out the bad and invite goodness into our lives by throwing beans at the oni. On top of that we eat beans (some more than others) to ensure a robust healthy year of life. Older people have to eat a greater number of beans. Miya and FJ had heard about Setsubun. We coloured in oni masks today just like our friends on the second floor. We tried to loop rubber bands through the holes on each side of the masks so that we could actually wear them. Darren dressed up with a cloak and a mask and we threw beans at him just like we would do if he was a real oni!

We hope that everyone ate their beans yesterday or today so that they have good luck during the year.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Nanako, Ayaka, Christine, Goh, Liezel and Sabine.