Friday, October 14, 2011

Open School Day

Class Room Observations

The school was open to parents for class room observation today. I arranged to go to my cooking class early so that I could then watch the munsters in their classes for the last hour. As I walked into the school building, a teaching assistant called out to me, "Moose's Mama!" "Hai," I replied. The Moose had been calling for his mama- later confessing that the sight of all of the other mamas trekking in and out of the classroom had made him want his mama so  he "kind of cried- maybe a little." He forgot that I told him, "I'll be there by two o'clock," and I was. I arrived just as his group began their performance. The Moose was playing a cat modeled after our beloved (and now deceased) Pooker. The play was a short Japanese folktale about an old man who finds a giant radish but needs the whole village to help him pull it out of the ground- the characters one by one find the old man until they all prevail over the radish at the end. The Moose spoke his lines well.

Nekko Moose
After school, the Moose told me he had finally gotten to check out the library book that he has been wanting.  However, he learned that the Thai villager page was actually Indians. He commented, "but I'm fine with that." I asked him, "Do you know anything about Thailand?" He replied, "It's the land of smiles." I liked that he remembered that. I asked him, "Did anything make you smile today?" "When Mama came to school," he said giving my hand a big squeeze.

The Mule, ever stubborn, refuses to smile for me
I think the Mule is embarrassed, at age seven, by her mother or perhaps she takes school more seriously than the Moose. At least she looked, albeit briefly, at me, but no smile.

Hallway sink for hand washing
Bulletin board with papers & drawings
Shoe bags hanging from hooks
Bulletin board inside classroom

2 comments :

  1. hey just to correct you: this story is not japanese, it is Russian folktale, my mom was reading it to me when I was little

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  2. I'd venture a guess that more than one culture claims the giant radish story, Romanian, Russian, etc. I did not know this story before Japan so I took it to be from Japan-- it is widely known there wherever it originated.

    Thank you for your comment!

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