February 20 - “Ohinasama”- the majestic craft!

Good morning everyone! We had a busy day today. Taiga and Yurika were so surprised when they saw the big basket on the art table. They also found some wonderful decorations and sticks. Our teachers showed us that we needed to glue these sticks and sequins on the basket. Sofie and Rei worked together to put more designs. Sofie was really good using her tiny busy hands to get our basket done. She was also trying to teach Rei how to put some popsicle sticks on our big art. And Rei, on the other hand, was very attentive and listened to Sofie’s directions.

Sofia was busy playing with the puzzles. She’s always very curious with the manipulative toys in class. We also had some play dough, shaping cutters and rolling pin. We loved kneading our play dough and we also tried to make sure that we could share our cookies and bread that we made out of play dough. Nikolas was very cooperative today. He liked to try almost all of our activities in class. He even asked his teachers to help him out find some feathers that he could put on the sticky film. And he also loved to color some pictures that our teachers drew for us.

Other kids were also busy reading in our library. So John read “The Little Drivers” for us. It was very interesting for we could see different modes of transportation such as the police car, ambulance, fire truck, boat and helicopter. Sofia, Taiga and Yurika were looking at the pictures and they were even repeating words like, ”police car and fire truck”.

We had our wonderful circle time again. Our teachers put out some faces on our white board, and we already knew that it was Buds class! Each of us had a chance of identifying our own and friends’ faces. It took a while to finish the activity but at least we have learned how to recognize everyone.

                Today, we also had a visitor. It was Taiga’s mommy – Yuriko. She was so nice and she showed us “Ohinasama”, a traditional Japanese doll. She said that we’re going to make the same thing but we’ll do an origami version of it. So, she let us choose a colored origami paper for the king and queen. The darker color was for the king and the lighter color was for the queen. We pasted the origami-made Ohinasama on a bigger piece of paper together and then glued some other designs on it. Rei, Nikolas, Sofia and Sofie were quietly working on their ohinasama while Yurika and Taiga stayed closer to Yuriko. And they even showed their Ohinasama to their teachers and friends as well.

After our marvelous art activity, we went back to our circle to thank Yuriko for a wonderful art. We loved every bit of it for we felt that we have made a very good job. It was not really that difficult because she helped a lot with process of making it. We sang our “Thank you song” for her and Taiga was right on her lap. Both of them were dancing to the song as if that she liked being here too.

As we said goodbye to Taiga’s mom, we also prepared for park. But after putting our smocks on, we read books about manners and Maisy the mouse. They really liked Maisy especially Nikolas. We learned that Maisy always does some things before going to bed. For example, she would drink her orange juice, brush her teeth, put on her pajamas, read a book, put her blanket on and lastly, said good night to her parents.

We went to the park today. The sun was up with a great sunshine. When we arrived, it was very quiet because nobody was there yet. So for 10 minutes, we enjoyed the slides and swings for ourselves. Later on, the Petals and Flowers classes came and we were so happy especially Rei to see them all again. And then Sayaka saw Nikolas, Taiga and Sofie looking at a small truck that sells potato. They waited for the truck to go for a few minutes and then they proceeded to play again with their friends.

We love Ohana and hope to see you all again on Monday! Thank you teachers for everything!

Lots of love,

John, Sayaka and Maki