"Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi"
The day started off absolutely freezing and when we went to the park, we really enjoyed the beautiful sunshine which felt a little warmer than earlier in the week. We ran around and love going up the stairs and down the slide and did this many times. We also shared our sand toys as we do every day when we bring 
them along to the park. Sometimes we notice that the really small children who play with our toys find it hard to share. This is always a good lesson for us as we can see how it is when people are not able to share. We think that maybe when we were smaller, we were just like they are!
Downstairs, we painted our small canvases and today we used blue paint. Jamie, Beckett, Oliver, Eva and Sophie did pink today. On Monday we will continue working on them as we need to have them finished by Tuesday 14th February. Today is the festival Setsubun when we chase the bad away from our homes and bring in the good 
for the coming year. We coloured in “oni” masks as the oni is what represents the bad. We tasted mame which we usually throw. They were crunchy and delicious! We didn’t want to throw them as we thought that they were food! We actually preferred to eat them.
We read a book called “Baby Animals” and love to bark or moo or crow when we see the animals. We sang our “Hello” song; “Love is something”; “Skinnamarinky dinky dink”; “Open them, shut them”; “5 little candles” and “I love you”. We used our hands to say “I love you”. We love reading books and spent time reading together on 
the large cushions with our friends and teachers. One of our favourite books is the ABC book and we always end up singing the ABC song when we read it. Our Princess book which is sometimes a source of conflict as we all like pushing the buttons and listening to the music, is now on another shelf and we have not noticed it yet. Our teachers are waiting to see who will spot it there!
Upstairs, we sang “You are my sunshine” and “Love is something” and incorporated actions with the words. We read “I like it when…………” It is the story of a mother penguin and how she shows her baby penguin her love. She tickles him, cuddles him and does so many other beautiful things to and with him, just like our mums do with and to us. Kana did a fun 
activity with us for Setsubun. We used an “oni” mask which we placed on a chair. We each took some “mame” or beans and threw them at the oni so that we could chase away all the bad things. We said “Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi”. Kana told us that we have to leave either a door or window open, so that the oni can run away when we are throwing beans at it. We did a special activity with our “oni” masks today. We used coloured sand and glitter to decorate them. We put glue in the spaces that we wanted to cover and then put the sand or glitter on the glue. We counted the same number of beans as our age and threw them at our own “oni” too. We hope that with all the chanting and bean throwing, all the bad luck will have left our homes, school and Japan and mostly good things will come to us all. We tried on our masks and tried to look scary.
Enjoy the weekend and see you on Monday for a short week at Ohana.
Love Shelley, Darren, Kana, and Goh