Our first Kindergarten graduation. We had a lovely day. The children sang and played for their parents and we shared a pizza lunch. The ceremonies were fun too! 

 

Warmer weather and we're doing lots of sping activities. We're feeling really bright and breezy!

Finger painting butterfly pictues. Paint one side. 

Then fold and press down... and you get a beautiful butterfly.

We are learning about caterpillars, butterflies, tadpoles and frogs.

And making flapbooks to show their journeys from eggs to...

 

We're making vases and flowers.

Look at our spring noticeboard.

   

Great excitement at school today as our piano arrived. How cool is that? Big thanks to the Erina/Anna family for making it possible.

Lovely weather so we walked to the park in Tsutusjigaoka and took our lunch. Bus back. Fun fun!

 

It's Pancake Day in England and the UK today. We made and ate pancakes for lunch (but seem to have lost the photos!). And then we went to the park and had pancake races (with our playdough pancakes we had made earlier).

 

We made really cute valentine's day cards for our mums and dads.

 

On Mondays everyone starts out with Japanese talking and song time, and then the older children have a Japanese class and practice their Hiragana and do other Japanese activities. After that, children older than 4 who are interested can take pianika class while the youunger ones get some small group or even one on one time with the English teachers.

We often shake it up on Mondays at lunch. While most days we speak English only at lunchtime and most other times, at least once a month we have Japanese lunch time and then one more time a month, we have bilingual lunch where we mix up the languages. The children always talk to Iwatani sensei in Japanese, and to me and usually Mana too in English. Among themselves they swap it around (codeswitch) which is kind of interesting to watch. It makes me feel really proud when they slip in and out of English and Japanese so comfortably. They don't mix words within sentences but they'll change backwards and forwards to Japanese and English depending on what they are talking about.

A slow photo day... we took about 80 as opposed to the usual 200. Links coming soon. And today...

  Lower School marshmallow and spaghetti space stations. 

Obstacle race.



 

As part of our pet studies, we went to Cainz Home Center's pet shop. We surveyed the kinds of pets they sell and how many of each they had. We aso found out about what they eat and what they need to have a happy life.

 

We also checked out the benches (we need some for the garden).

 

Right now our PE and science connection is balance. The children are working out how all different kinds of things can balance or not, including themselves! We are playing big Jenga, building towers, doing PE balance activities and playing Continent Twister.  Beam exercises, obstacle courses, weighing with scales and lots more coming soon.