Yummy gyoza!

It was so lovely to be able to go outside and play in the park even though it was quite cold. We ran around and played on the slide and found some ice lying on the ground from the snowfall two nights ago. Inside our classrooms there were many things taking place. Upstairs, we read the story “Don’t step on the crack”. During our circle time, we sat on the mat and sang “Five Green Dragons”. We have new animal counters and used them to illustrate the number of dragons. We used the green counters as the song was about five green dragons. We looked at pictures of dragons and observed how they looked and what their bodies have on them. We thought that they had “crocodile eyes” and “crocodile teeth”. We saw “bats wings” on their bodies and “lions claws”. It was interesting for us to look carefully at them and see what we could see, in relation to other animals. None of us have ever seen a real dragon so other animals that we have seen in the zoo and those we have seen in pictures are our measure. Together we drew a dragon on the white board. As part of our theme for January on New Year Celebrations around the world, we were each given a “hagoita”. This looks like a flat paddle with a short handle and “hagoitas” are used with a colourful “hane“ to play a game called “hanetsuki” when it is New Year in Japan. It is almost like a game where you use a bat and a shuttlecock. We used paint markers to decorate the “hagoita” and they are another of our “works in progress” which we will add some more things to later in the week and possibly next week too. “Hagoita” are also used as decorations as they have beautiful Japanese 3D designs on them.

Downstairs we continued our Chinese New Year celebrations and made gyoza. Kana was the chef today and we started off singing “What’s cooking in Kana’s pot?” Well, in the bowl we put nira, spring onion and minced beef together with a sprinkle of salt. Kana and Shelley chopped up the vegetables and we all had a turn to mix them together in two bowls. Then Kana used her hand to really mix everything together well. She showed us something that was a circle shape. This was the gyoza skin. She placed a small amount of the mixture in the middle of the skin; we dipped the tip of our finger into water and painted around the edge of the skin. We closed the skin over the meat and then pinched the edges. This was so much fun and of course we loved putting our hands into water. Then we went and sat on the mat for story time while Kana did the cooking. All of this took a long time. The story we listened to was about a cow who loved eating pears. The cow’s name was Pamela and she would go to extraordinary lengths to be able to eat pears. She even pulled a tree that she was tied to, out of the ground, in order to get some pears. And then when she ate so many, she couldn’t look at another pear and turned her attention to apples.

We ate the gyoza at lunchtime and when we came back into our classroom after playing in the park, we could still smell the gyoza. It was good to come back to a warm classroom that smelt of cooking. We shared the gyoza with our friends upstairs and we hope that they ate them with as much relish as we did! Yummmm!

Tomorrow we will be celebrating Australia Day with some vegemite and toast!

Love Shelley, Darren, Kana, Goh and Marie