The golden screen and many shapes

It was another cold and rainy day in Tokyo and inside our classrooms it was warm and cosy and busy. Our rooms were filled with fun activities, some new things to do and learn about, our friends and our loving caring teachers who make sure that we are safe and happy each day.

Upstairs we made Hina dolls in whichever way we wanted to. We looked at the chart which has a variety of dolls made from paper plates and we chose which one we wanted to do. We pasted on blue patterned origami for the “Odairisama” and pink patterned origami for the “Ohinasama”. We cut the plates all by ourselves and then attached our faces and our friends face to them. We love seeing ourselves as the Hina Dolls and looked at them over and over where they are displayed on the shelf. When real Hina Dolls are on display they have seven steps and many dolls that represent people from long ago and the jobs that they did for the Emperor and Empress. There is also usually a golden screen so we set about making our own equivalent of a golden screen. We used gold paint, gold glitter paint and some collage materials in gold. The screen has folds in it and when our creations are dry, we will place them behind our dolls.

Downstairs we too spent time on our Hina Dolls. We added our faces to them together with their headdresses and the things that they are holding. The Emperor is holding a “shaku” which is a baton and the Empress is holding a “sensu” which is a kind of fan.

We put the Hina Dolls on the light box downstairs. We have been touching them and making them move because on the paper plates when you touch them, they rock like a cradle. We had fun with our teachers and friends and pretended to be puppy dogs when we were playing musical instruments. We were dancing and moving around the room while playing the instruments. Whenever there was a song with actions, we put the instruments down and did the actions spontaneously.

As it is coming to the end of February, we decided to complete our bees that we had started making a few weeks ago. Some of us needed to cover a toilet roll with strips of yellow and black and then we added all the other things that we needed. We looked for two eyes, two antennae, two pairs of wings and six legs. Our teachers used the glue gun to attach the parts securely. Our bees are hanging near the window and they look like they are flying

Upstairs we finished our theme on Transport with a table activity. We each had a selection of shapes and we used them to make a form of transport. We had circles which we thought could be wheels; we had squares and rectangles which became cars and buses. Ayaka read to us a Transport ‘kamishibai’ story today and Beckett chose to make a shinkansen with the shapes. Yossi made a bus, Jennifer made a bus, Nico made a car, Sean made a bus and Andres made a bus using the whole sheet of paper.

We played musical chairs and Beckett was the winner the first time and Sean won the second time. It was good that many of us have a chance to win this game.

This morning Shelley spoke to Darren on Skype and she told him that we are missing him. He will be back next week and we can show him all the things that we made and did when he was in England. Downstairs we read many stories with our teachers and we enjoy sitting in small groups choosing our stories. We have started reading stories to our teachers as well. We choose our favourite book and then we turn the pages and tell the story to them. The ones we chose today were the ABC book, The Three Bears, The kitten book and Nemo. Abiya even read a book to Sabine in her language. Even though Sabine didn’t understand the words, she knew the story from looking at the pictures.

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