It’s Autumn season and of course it’s harvest time! After 4 months of waiting, finally the Milky Way students were able to harvest the sweet potatoes! Everybody was very excited to go back to the farm where they planted the sweet potato slips in June. There was also a time when they visited the farm to water the sweet potatoes they planted. Now is the harvest time! They all used their strength to dig the soil and pull the sweet potatoes. They couldn’t hide their joy and amazement every time they got the sweet potatoes from underground. Most of the sweet potatoes they got were so big that even them couldn’t believe its size. Because Mr. Koyama is always generous to us, they also experienced picking chestnuts and they got a lot of them. We divided it for all of them and they took it home. They also asked Mr. Koyama how to eat chestnuts. According to him, fresh chestnuts must always be cooked before use and are never eaten raw. You need to remove the chestnuts from their skins by either boiling or roasting them. Chestnuts are best eaten steamed, boiled, dried or, most commonly, roasted. One recipe they can try at home is Japanese chestnut rice or kuri gohan. I hope you enjoy cooking together with your children! Next month, we will go back to the farm for the sweet potato party with their parents. 

In our UOI, we continued to explore different countries around the world. Milky Way students had fun in our country name guessing video game wherein the video shows the map of the country from the world map and students get to choose one country name among the given choices which also helps them recognise and be more familiar with the countries around the world. We also discovered how many countries there are around the world by counting the flags by groups. At the end we counted the flags all together and combined them by doing addition and we found out that there are 196 countries around the world.

We also had a Show and Tell activity wherein students bring a trip souvenir they have at home which their family got from travel abroad. So far, a few of them have already shared what they got and they are from Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore. They showed us a ref magnet, bracelets, photos, and ang pao envelope which each of them had received from their generous friend. Next week, they will continue to share their trip souvenir stories and learn more about different countries.

We are planning to set up a play area related to our UOI and to incorporate student agency, we asked Milky Way students what kind of restaurant/shop they want to set up in the classroom. Most of them said that they want to make a Philippine restaurant/shop and they chose the Halo-halo shop. The teachers and the students worked together to put up the shop they like. They made a sign board with the Philippine flag and made some ingredients for the halo-halo using paper clay. Next week, we will paint the sweet potatoes, bananas, and red beans to make it more realistic. We also discovered that the making of Philippine’s halo-halo actually came from Japanese kakigori and everybody was surprised about it. No wonder why they are very interested in knowing and eating halo-halo because they remember its similarity to kakigori. So far, they are already enjoying playing and making halo-halo in our shop.

Thank you for reading our blog. Have a lovely weekend!