Delicious odango for "Otsukimi"

Well, what a great surprise we had today. Goh san came up to our classroom to work with us as there are so many Buds Class children sick today. Those of us who were in Buds Class last year, were so happy to see her and we went up to her and asked her: “Do you remember my name?” “Of course”, she said. We had a busy morning as usual and the cherry on top was being able to go to the park and play outside.

Hisami sat with us at one table, and Shelley sat with us at the other table. At Shelley’s table, those of us who were not at school yesterday, made our faces using pictures of real eyes and we added hair using a lead pencil. We spoke about our faces and looked in mirrors to see what our own faces look like. You can see from some of the photos, how happy we were to look at our reflections, and also surprised.

 We had a lot of work to do at the table with Hisami because we prepared and made odango; which are the delicious “rice balls” that people eat when it is “Otsukimi”. We mixed the rice powder with water until it was like play dough. Then we broke it into little pieces and rolled it into balls. Some of us even made little sausages. Most of the shapes that we made were like balls. Hisami popped the balls into hot water so that they could cook and get soft. When they were all cooked, Shelley rinsed them off with cold water in a colander. A colander is like a plastic bowl except it has many holes in it. The reason for all of the holes is so the water can all flow out and the odango do not sit inside the water. The water also made them cool off so that we could eat them straight away. Hisami had two bowls filled with “kinako” and “anko”. We chose which flavours we wanted to add to our odango so that they would have a taste. Odango, on their own, do not have any taste. Most of us enjoyed eating the odango and we hope that when the moon is full, we will be able to see the rabbit pounding mochi.

While some of us were cooking odango, some of us were rolling balls out of colourful tissue paper. Do you remember the other day when we tore strips of coloured tissue paper well today we used those very same strips and rolled them into balls. So you can see that we made balls out of rice powder and water and then we made more balls out of coloured tissue paper. We still don’t know what we will do with the coloured tissue paper balls but you know what we did with the odango…….”we ate them!”

  We played a game with a new friend called “Harold”. He is a friend of Mr. B. who came to school yesterday. Harold helped us find our names on the board after we introduced ourselves to him. We sang “Who’s at school today?” Harold was a little bit shy and wanted someone to hold his hand when he was singing “Who’s at school today?” so Charlie came to stand with him, and he held his hand. “Thanks Charlie for holding my hand”, said Harold. “You made me feel welcome”.

Hisami read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” together with the piano. It was lovely to listen to the story, which we know so well and also have beautiful music playing with it. Music is not only something to listen to because it is so beautiful but it makes us have many different feelings. We could feel many different feelings when we listened to the music playing. We could feel when the caterpillar was energetic and looking for lots of food; we could feel when he had a sore tummy after eating too much and we could feel how free he felt when he became a butterfly and flew away.

Some of us also completed our “Otsukimi” pictures and hopefully by tomorrow, we will all have done them.

In the park, we had to be careful on the large slide because it had rain water on it, right in the spot where we sit, to slide down. There were also some puddles of mud, which we played with as most of us like puddles and mud.

“I like mud; I like it on my nose

I like it on my fingers; I like it on my toes

Dirt’s pretty horrible but mud’s the stuff

I like mud.”

Have a great afternoon everyone and see you tomorrow.

All the children in Petals Class.