Andy Warhol Pop art exhibition and a lesson about Japan

Today we went on a wonderful excursion to the Mori Art Museum to see the Andy Warhol exhibition. Before we left school to go to the museum we listened to guidelines from our teachers on how we should walk to the gallery but more importantly the “Do’s and Don’ts” of art gallery behaviour. The most important thing that we learnt was that we could not touch the art works and the disappointing thing was that we could not take any photographs. This one is from the pamphlet that we got at the entrance before we went inside.

 We had an early snack and set off on our way with some of our mums and helpers and we held the rope, just like we do when we walk to the park each day. We met Baby, Allie’s mom, who showed us a short cut and a safer way to walk, with less cars. We went up 52 floors in an elevator which was amazing. The lights changed colour as we went up and up and up and we felt like we were all going up to the sky, wherever that is!

 At the very beginning of the exhibition, there was a racing car painted by Andy Warhol which we thought was fantastic. Inside we saw the famous Marilyn Monroe picture. There were five of them in different colours and they were quite big. We also saw photos of Andy Warhol himself with spiky hair. We liked so many of the paintings especially a set of animals e. g. a lion, elephant, goat, rhino, eagle etc. We saw paintings of Michael Jackson and Mohammed Ali who we don’t really know about. Our favourite part of the exhibition was a room filled with helium balloons; which we could not touch. It was a wonderful experience for us all and we are grateful to many of our parents who came along to enjoy the exhibition together with us and be our chaperones. We also want to thank our teachers for organising it and to Christine for discovering that the exhibition was on, and so close to our school.

Downstairs, we are working on our canvasses and today we tore, cut and pasted parts of photographs onto the existing designs that we have made. We have sponged them, put squished tissue paper on them and now they have some photos on them. Tomorrow some of our friends will continue putting photos on their ones and those of us who worked on them today, will do either marbling or put paper tape on.

  Our journey for International Month took us to Japan, which is where we are all living at the moment. Hisami started off with a cooking activity which was making ‘odango’. We rolled the mixture into small balls and made so many of them. When we had finished rolling them, she put water into the nabe pot, let it boil and then put our mochi balls inside the boiling water for a few minutes. We loved rolling the balls as this is something that we enjoy doing with play dough too.

  Just after Hisami completed reading the “Momotaro” story, she explained to us how we can eat the ‘odango”. We could either eat it with some “azuki” which is red bean paste or we could eat it with soy sauce and sugar. Some of us really enjoyed eating them and had about 6 of them or more. Some of us preferred not to tast them, which our teachers understand. There are some foods that we like and some that we don’t like! And this is the same for adults as well!

The story of “Momotaro” was wonderful and we learnt that he was born from a peach which a lady found floating along a river. The peach was a large one. Momotaro’s mission was to go and fight the oni and he took ‘odango’ with him to give him sustenance and help him “be strong”. Some of us didn’t quite get the gist of the story and we told our teachers that when we grow up, we will be an oni! Hmmmmmm! Hisami tasted the ‘odango’ and look how strong she became.

Thanks Hisami for teaching us about Japan today. We learnt some action songs as well and when we sat down to have our lunch, we sang a song for “Obento” in Japanese. We also made Japanese flags and Elisa knew that a white one with a red circle in the middle is for Japan.

Love always

Shelley, Darren, Hisami, Ayaka, Liezel, Nanako, Goh, Christine, Maryna, Sharee