Pre-KG 2025/ 26 Blog 25
O-Hinasama and celebration food
This Monday was the day before O-Hinasama Matsuri, a traditional Japanese festival that is held every year on 3rd of March.
Many Japanese families display an elaborate set of dolls often handed down from generations or just the main two dolls representing the Emperor and Empress.
It is one of my and my daughter's favourite festivals and as I would like the Pre-Kindergarten and DSKI community to know about it, it has become a tradition for the Pre-Kindergarten class to set up the two dolls the school owns at the entrance for everyone to admire.
After setting up a beautiful display in the hallway, the Pre-Kindergarten children sang the traditional song and then made their own set of dolls with paper plates and beautiful origami paper as kimono.They chose the pattern to their liking, drew some charming faces and put their finished dolls on display.
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After singing to the song again, the Pre-Kindergarten children wanted to dress and feed the baby dolls in the classroom which really showed their caring side.
The school lunch held a nice surprise as it was based on the chirashi-sushi which is traditionally enjoyed on O-Hinasama Day.
Food is not only one of the current unit subjects, but really cherished by the Pre-Kindergarten children, so the next morning they invited some friends from K1 to join a little bento making party in our play kitchen. It was heartwarming to see how well the children played together and how much joy they showed !
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Ms.Azusa in her music lesson continued the theme with a Japanese song called adaptly " The Bento song" and again the children had so much fun.
As the unit combines "Animals and Food" and the Pre-Kindergarten children have learnt so much in recent weeks, we gave them a small assignment in form of a matching task. We put three animals on the table and ask the children to allocate the correct food items.
They mastered this perfectly and their actions were accompanied by full sentences in English...lion eats meat, elephant eats water melon and bananas, horse eats grass and carrots ! The children have advanced in their language and become very knowledgeable !
Later in the day we collaborated with K1 and K2 and visited the Sheraton Hotel together to view their stunning full set of O-Hinasama doll made by amazing craftsmen. It was my pleasure explaining the different dolls and ornaments to the attentive children and teachers.
On Friday we looked at the pictures the parents have kindly sent me and talked about what the children are eating. The Pre-Kindergarten children were very excited to see themselves on the photos and again were able to talk about the food and match items correctly. Great progress, everyone !
As the Pre-Kindergarten children could not have sweets for the O-Hinasama festival, but they enjoy healthy fruits, we ended the week with another "cooking" activity. The children cut mango into smaller pieces to create a sunflower around grape "seeds". Not only did they cut well, but the fruit sunflower looked very appealing and tasted even more delicious.
This was a nice treat for a very busy week which also featured many visitors to the school, a 3D printer seminar for the teachers (STEM) and two sports matches for our upper Primary on Friday ! Both, the DSKI basketball team and the DSKI soccer team won their matches and we were so proud of them. Some of these children have attended Pre-Kindergarten and it was wonderful to see them grow up into kind, fair and confident players.
We also have many siblings across all grades and it makes me very happy that we can all collaborate and learn from each other ! Next week is the K2 Assembly which I am also much looking forward to.
Enjoy the plum blossoms this weekend !
With kind regards, mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Anita Ursula Mönch
DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher
Playgroup / EY GFL & Deutsch
German Saturday School homeroom teacher
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