Today, Teacher Hisako led us in a Japanese Tea Ceremony! She is an expert in this, so we learned a lot from her. First, we prepared for the event by wearing Kimono. Next, we went down to the community room to watch Teacher Hisako perform the tea ceremony. She showed us the pots and bowls used for the tea ceremony. She wiped everything carefully with a little cloth, spooned matcha into her tea bowl and carefully added hot water. She used a chasen to whisk her tea until it was frothy and showed us how to turn the tea bowl properly before drinking! Then, it was our turn to participate in the tea ceremony. We started by eating a sweet treat called okashi to prepare our tongues for the bitter taste of the green tea. After, we tucked our napkin into our kimono to save for wiping our tea bowls later. After that, we used the chasen to whisk our tea until it was frothy, then turned our bowls and properly sipped our tea! We all agreed that the sweet treat was delicious, but only some of us could handle the bitter taste of the tea! Thank you for this wonderful experience, Teacher Hisako!
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Valentine's Day in kindergarten is always a blast for the kiddos AND teachers! We prepared for this special day by tracing, cutting and "sewing" our heart shaped mailboxes. Everyone got some good cutting practice and fine motor work from stitching the hearts together. On Valentine's Day, we delivered our handwritten valentines to all of our classmates' mailboxes. We got a lot of practice reading each other's names. When some of us had trouble reading the names, our classmates helped us! After all of the valentines were delivered, we waited patiently to open and read our cards until AFTER lunch time. The teachers were really proud of us. All of us appreciated the thoughtful messages written by our friends and many of us traveled around the classroom to thank each other for the cards. Additionally, we made thoughtful cards for our parents. We practiced using lowercase letters and spaces between our words when writing our messages.
Sumo Day is always a great way to start the week! In skills class, we have been preparing for our matches against the sumo wrestlers. Each of us was very brave and defeated the sumo wrestlers by pushing them out of the dohyo! After, we thanked the sumo wrestlers and presented them with some treats made by our room parents. We had a few questions for them as well. Our Japanese speaking students were helpful and translated our questions. First, we asked "Why do you wear mawashi?" and found out that this is the uniform of sumo wrestlers and it is a tradition to wear this type of uniform in the sport. Next, we asked "How much do you practice?" and we found out that they train for six hours a day--wow! Finally, we asked "How much do you eat?" and discovered that they eat ALOT. Instead of eating one bowl of rice at a meal like the average person, they eat ten bowls! That is how they stay strong and maintain their sumo physique. We ended our sumo experience with a class picture--can you tell how excited we were?
Today, we celebrated Setsubun in our kindergarten class! According to the old lunar calendar of Japan, February 3rd is the day before the first day of Spring. We experienced some of the traditions of Setsubun that bring good luck and ward off bad luck! First, we made eho maki sushi rolls. We spread rice out on the nori, added our choice of fillings (cucumber, sausage, corn and egg) and used our hand muscles to roll up the ingredients with a bamboo mat! After, we ate the sushi roll facing the lucky direction, which was north northwest this year. We also ate it without talking, which is supposed to bring good luck as well! After eating our Eho Maki we participated in lucky bean throwing! Some Oni's snuck into our classroom and we threw roasted soybeans at them, shouting "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi!" (Out with the devil, in the with good luck!). They quickly retreated! Next, it was our turn to be the Oni's! We designed and cut out our own Oni masks, then snuck into another kinder classroom. After they scared us off, we ate a soybean for every year of our age, which was also good luck! Overall, Setsubun was an exciting and lucky day!
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