Hello, everyone!! Tomorrow (Saturday) is the last day that Starry will have classes in 2021. Christmas is only a week away now, and New Year's Day is also coming up very soon. January 4th will be the first day in 2022 that we will start having classes again. Many of our students have been having fun making a Christmas craft this past week. Grades 1 to 4 have made a cute gingerbread man so far. Here is a photo from today's 5pm class:
From left to right, the students are Miu from Grade 4, Yume from Grade 3, and Mizuki, Sara, & Ayaka from Grade 4. They are holding the Christmas craft they made this afternoon. It looks like a gingerbread cookie!! Everybody did a great job. The students in Grades 5 to 9 have also made something related to Christmas: a kind of candle decorated with some things in nature which smell very nice. It looks like this:
We melted some candle wax and then put some decorations together which smell like Christmas. For example, you can see a cinnamon stick, a dried orange slice, some red berries, a couple of pine cones, and so on. This is actually the one that I made. The students' creations were much better than mine, though! Everyone used their own unique style when they made them. We also added some smells such as peppermint (that's what candy canes smell like!) and then poured the candle wax over the decorations. After the wax became hard again, we put some string through a hole near the top. That way, students can hang those up somewhere if they want to.
Do you know what this picture shows? It's a horse pulling a sleigh, and you might be able to notice that there are some bells on the horse! We often think of this image when we sing the famous Christmas song "Jingle Bells", because we can hear the horse's bells as it pulls the sleigh forward. People in cold places used to often travel that way during the winter season. At Starry, some of our students have been singing this song in the December classes. And some of them have been singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" or "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". These are popular holiday songs, too! Remember, Santa is coming pretty soon. So I hope all of our kids at Starry have been good this year. If so, then maybe some of them will get presents from Santa Claus in about a week...
Oh, look! Here he comes!!! Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you all enjoy your winter break. I look forward to seeing you again in 2022!!
- Peter 
