Mochi Odango Making

Dear Flower Class parents, This morning we missed Maki who was not in today as she is getting married tomorrow and needed to prepare. Luckily we had Goh San in to help us in Flowers Class. On the table in the morning we saw lots of cooking things and wondered “What are they for”? Ayaka told us that if we remembered yesterday’s circle time we talked about a special time in Japan called Otsukimi (Moon Viewing) which comes in the autumn. We saw some powder, a jug of water and a cooking pot. First we poured the powder into a mixing bowl and then poured in some cold water. The mixture was very thick and looked just like white play-dough. Ayaka told us the powder and water mixture makes ‘Mochi’ which is a kind of sticky rice. We rolled the mochi into balls just like we did when we made the skeletons heads with art clay. Once the balls were ready the teachers helped us put them into hot water to cook. They smelled yummy! We ate the mochi after we had finished our snacks and had them with some Anko (Red Bean Paste). They were really good and we all tried them. On the second table three of us finished our twig skeletons with the teachers help. They are now on display in the classroom so please take a look if you get a moment. After packing away the cooking materials we all worked on a secret card for someone special but we need to keep it a secret for the moment. On the carpet area the clear easel was very popular and we drew our friend’s faces with the chalk markers. The stencil drawing was also popular with many of us drawing snakes, cars and airplanes using them. Also on the table several of us used the Montessori ‘fractions boards’ to draw around on origami paper. It was a little difficult to draw around the bigger pieces but we tried our best. After snack time and the yummy mochi we went to the class library and selected a book each. The teachers read a funny book to us called ‘There was an old lady who swallowed a fly’. We remembered all of the creatures in the story and then discussed how people have some features the same as animals such as having two eyes, one nose, two ears etc. but some parts are different like having 4 legs etc. We decided on our favorite creatures: Cheetahs, cats, crabs, elephants, sheep, frogs, giraffes and dragonflies. We looked at another book called ‘Animals, Animals’ which showed the tallest animals, the smallest, the fastest etc. Ayaka helped us practice our Ohana school song and then we talked about the upcoming sports day in October. We now have a Flowers Class chant which goes like this; “We are Flowers Class,

We are all so fast,

We will never come last,

Go Flowers Go”!

We practiced one of the sports day races while doing our chant which was the ‘egg and spoon race’. When the teachers did it the egg stayed on the spoon even when the spoon was upside down. We were amazed and thought it must have been magic. To make the next magic work we needed to all work together to make a coin disappear from under and cup. We said the magic words and gave the magic blow on the cup and ‘poof’ it had disappeared. We searched for it everywhere and it found it eventually behind one of our friend’s ears. Wow! Real magic!

Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you all again next week.

All our love, Darren, Ayaka, Go San and Ryoan.