Ochita ochita, nani ga ochita

We can’t believe that this is the last week of April this year and next week will be a new month called May. We were so happy to start off the week with great weather and our fun gymnastics class. We enjoyed playing in the park and spent a lot of time running up and down in the green area; as well as fine tuning our ball skills. We threw the balls and caught them and tried to dribble them like soccer players do. In our gymnastics class we showed our teachers how much stronger we are, since the beginning of the year. Miyashita sensei counts up to 10 when we make our table with our bodies but he really counts to 20 because he says ichi, ni, san, chi, go, roku, nana, hachi, kyu, kyu, kyu, kyu, kyu, kyu………………..and then eventually he says ju. We try to hold our bodies up until he has counted ten and then we usually collapse and sigh. You can see from the photos how high we can push our tummies up, to make them almost flat. Our balancing skills have developed too and our core muscles are getting stronger and stronger. Look how we balance on our

bottoms, with our feet and arms in the air!

These gymnastics classes are similar to the classes that we think our mums and dads go to in the gym. Our classes are 45 minutes long so we have a pretty good workout every Monday morning. You can see from some of the photos that we have our hands covering our heads. Well, we played “Ochita, ga ochita, nani ga ochita” and today we had to protect ourselves from the crows or “carasu” as they are called in Japanese. When Miyashita sensei said “carasu” we sat down as quickly as we could and covered our heads. We don’t like crows. When we first arrived at school, some of us went to see if our tadpoles survived the weekend and phew, they did! Akari’s mum, Ayako, said that they like dirty water and are quite strong. We cannot see any legs yet and are looking forward to seeing how they metamorphosise into frogs. We added some water and took some out of their container and we also gave them a little bit of food in an ice cube. Darren and the children in Flowers Class chopped some lettuce up and put it into an ice tray so that we can have ice cubes to feed the tadpoles. Flowers Class also has tadpoles and apparently, their ones already have back legs.

Hisami sat with us and we completed making our large “Koi nobori”. The one is the dad, the second one is the mum and the third one is the baby. So they are one family of “Koi nobori”. We cut out the shape of the fins and decorated them with the colourful dot markers. We then attached them to the sides of the “Koi nobori” and hung them in our classroom. We were thinking about hanging them up outside which is what people do with their “Koi nobori” but…………………do you know why we didn’t hang ours outside? Yes, because they are made of paper and if it rains, the rain will destroy them and we don’t want that to happen.

We are nearly ready for “Kodomo no hi” but have one more thing to make…..the kabuto.

Thanks for a fun day at school.

Love always

The children in Petals Class