Happy birthday Andres Felipe and welcome Liam

This is the last week of February and then it will be one month and we will all be in our new school. It is so exciting and we know that there are so many things but as everyone in Japan says “ganbarro”!

Today was an extremely busy day with us all doing activities in preparation for Hina Matsuri. Our teachers decided that while we are all using paper plates as the base for our “ohinasama” and “odairisama” we can chose from the pictures that are displayed, what style we would like to use for our particular art work.

Some of them have both people on the paper plate and some have only one person on the plate. For those of us who are putting making two people for our representation of Hina Matsuri, our teachers asked us which of our friends we would like to have as either the boy or girl, next to us. Downstairs, Tokutaro chose Abiya, Lily chose Liam, Vincent chose Allie, Abiya chose Tokutaro in return, and we paired William with his sister Jennifer. We decorated the paper plate using pieces of origami paper in different colours. We had a selection of navy blue patterned paper for the boys and pinks for the girls. Our teachers know that these colours can be used for both genders however they also wanted to help us understand the concept of two halves and making each one look completely different. So we pasted blue on one half of a paper plate and pinks on the other half. Downstairs our teachers drew a line down the center of the plate and we learnt that in this way we were dividing the plate into two parts. When the origami pieces are dry and have adhered properly to the plate, we will fold it in half so that one side will represent the emperor and the other side will represent the empress. It will be interesting for us to see as the plate will look different from how we made it.

Upstairs we are able to work independently and we cut the plate in half and twisted it to look like a cone shape. We will use one half for one person and the other half for the other person. You can see from the ones that we have made already, we have our faces on them so it looks like the girls will be the empresses and the boys will be the emperors. The girls are holding a beautiful fan while wearing a crown on their heads.

We had a great time celebrating with Andres Felipe, his mum, Luisa, his dad Andres and his brother, Santiago. They prepared a wonderful table of things for us to eat and we want to thank them for their generosity and kindness. Andres Felipe was so excited about his party and was waiting anxiously for his family to arrive. We were fortunate to be able to have the entire school together for the party and we started off by singing “I’m looking to see who is clapping their hands”. This is our song where we combine actions with saying good morning in different languages. We said good morning in Spanish, English, French, Hebrew, Chinese (which of course Jennifer knew), Japanese, German and Tagalog. We then stood up and sang “When you’re happy and you know it” and did actions like jump, turn around, shout ‘happy birthday’, whisper ‘happy birthday’, clap your hands, blink your eyes and the last one was sit down on the mat. Andres Felipe sat on a chair with his parents next to him and we sang “How old are you now”; to which he replied that he was six. So we sang “He’s six years old now”. We counted six in Spanish and Japanese. Margo presented him with his gift of a string of hearts and Miya gave him his crown so he could look like a king. He invited everyone to join him at the table for snack time and then to share in the feast of treats.

Just before we went to the park, Ayaka read another story from the Kamishibai. It was another one about Hina Matsuri. We learnt about the many steps that are used when you display the dolls for Girls Day.

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