It’s April and here that means a new school year has begun. Our first task this week was to tell about ourselves. We made fold-out personal “portraits” to show what we look like, what we like to eat and to do. It was fun and a good way to practice how to introduce ourselves when we meet a new friend.

On the last two days of our special Spring School class in March, we went to the park to play games in the sunshine. On the 28th we played with a colorful parachute and did some bean bag tossing at a target. It was great! On the 29th the weather was not really so good but we had fun trying to fly the kites we had put together and decorated.

Here are a few photos we took!

Today we celebrated Setsubun, which is sometimes rather strangely referred to in English as “Bean Throwing Day”. It’s not really about beans except that roasted soy beans are thrown at “ogres” to dispel the cold of winter and to encourage us to look forward to spring, which we hope will come soon! It’s a different sort of Groundhog Day. Additionally, it is actually February 3, but tomorrow is a Saturday and we have no school on Saturdays. We had a great time making “horns” to play at being the ogres, and throwing the beans at the ogres when it was our turn to throw.

Yesterday we celebrated Winnie-the-Pooh Day!

We made party hats to wear and heard about and watched Winnie the Pooh film clips. We also painted a poster that shows the “100 Aker Wood” from the Pooh books.

Today we made some popcorn and talked about how it grows and why it “pops” and watched some more Winnie the Pooh stories. Why popcorn? Today is National Popcorn Day in the US!

Pooh Bear and his friends were the inspiration for our class names at HK International Preschools. Our 2 year old class is the Roo Class, 2-3 YO is the Piglet Class, 3-4 YO is the Tigger Class, 4-5 YO is the Rabbit Class, and 5-6 YO is the Owl Class. Many of our school decorations follow a Pooh & Friends theme and each day at our school we strive to be a happy family, each person appreciated for their uniqueness and what they can contribute to our school as a whole, just like in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.

Wow! It’s already December 1st! So today, some of us started decorating for year-end, Christmas, and whatever else our diverse student group celebrates at this “darkest” time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, looking forward to the return of the “light” bringing the Spring and new life with it.