Pre-Kindergarten 2021/22/23: Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 15 Making a gingerbread house and O-Sechi

Pre-KG 2022 / 23 Blog 15

Making a gingerbread house and O-Sechi

In my last Pre-Kindergarten blog I introduced all the wonderful food the children, teachers and their families ate in the winter holidays. The Pre-KG children love looking at their pictures in the classroom and they really are a good conversation starter.

After the children created some bentos last week with their new wooden food toys, we started this week by making some of the food items with origami paper. It was quite tricky to fold those colourful squares into fish and cakes, but the children showed great patience and so did Ms.Chinatsu. Now the origami art pieces are a colourful feature on our unit wall.

On Monday, we also did an emergency drill with Pre-KG , because it is important to practice and because the following day was the 28th Anniversary of the Great Kobe Hanshin Earthquake.

As there were quite some gingerbread cookies featured on the pictures in class, we decided on Wednesday to decorate the gingerbread house which was kindly donated by Sofia’s parents. First we had to make icing which needed some good mixing, but we have very helpful children who have also some baking skills.

The decoration consisted of sweets including chocolates and gummy bears and looked very enticing, so some self-control was required.

The gingerbread house proved a little fragile and the icing did not settle well, so we made a quick change of planning. Everyone, including our trial day visitors, had so much fun and we ended up with big gingerbread cookies which tasted really delicious. What a treat!

The next day we looked again at O-Sechi which is so beautiful and an art in itself.

Hm, so what actually is O-Sechi?

According to Wikipedia -

Quote: “Osechi-ryōri (御節料理, お節料理 or おせち)

are traditional traditional Japanese New Year foods. The tradition started in the Heian period (794–1185).Osechi are easily recognizable by their special boxes called jūbako,, which resemble bentō boxes.

The term osechi originally referred to o-sechi, a season or significant period. New Year's Day was one of the five seasonal festivals in the Imperial Court in Kyoto. This custom of celebrating particular days was introduced from China into Japan.

Originally, during the first three days of the New Year, it was taboo to use a hearth and cook meals, except when cooking zōni. Osechi was made by the close of the previous year, as women did not cook in the New Year.

In the earliest days, osechi consisted only of nimono, boiled vegetables with soy sauce and sugar or mirin. Over the generations, the variety of food included in osechi has increased. Today it may refer to anything prepared specially for the New Year, and some foreign dishes have been adopted as "Westernized osechi".

And while osechi was traditionally prepared at home, it is also sold ready-made in specialty stores, grocery stores, and even convenience stores. “ -End of quote

Well, O-Sechi definitely looked very appealing to our children, so we decided to make some of the food in a similar way.

On Thursday, the children went shopping at the nearby supermarket which was an adventure in itself.

The chocolates had to stay on the shelves, but carrots, beans, fish sausages etc. went into the basket as well as eggs which miraculously did not break.

Great job, Pre-KG !

Finally, on Friday, we set our table in the Pre-Kindergarten room with all the items to make some festive food.

The children carefully cut some kamaboko (fish sausage) with a blunt knife, then used the new cookie cutters for making cute flower shape carrots and added some black beans. After this they were scrambling the eggs skilfully and seasoned them with a bit of salt and pepper.

Then we were off to the kitchen where Mr.Lubin helped to make the omelette and finally the children had all the ingredients to make their own box of O-sechi.