Celebrating New Year in Japan

Praying at our local shrine, New Year's

In Japan, New Year's festival started a very long time ago. We celebrate it on the first of January. It's a
public holiday. We celebrate with family in my grandparents' house, because we want to enjoy the start of the year together.

People eat 'osechi' on New Year's Day too. It's a special meal with different foods, and each dish has a meaning. For example, black beans mean good health, and sweetened fish cake means a long life.

New Year's festival is important in Japan because it brings families together to share special wished for health & happiness.

Posted for Ceilidh

What do you need - YLE chefs' recipes

A follow up exercise, to a follow up game, to a textbook activity!

Difficult to conceptualise countable/uncountable items in a classroom without going to the office fridge on a raid...and most young learners, certainly here in Japan, do not linger very long in their kitchens & can barely cook instant noodles.

Orchard Toys' Crazy Chefs works to fill that concept gap very nicely, as players take turns to fill their recipe...asking "What do you need?" or "What do you want?" and replying with "I need/want a..." or "I need some ...." if they've turned over a card on their list. Wrong card = "I don't need a ...." or "I don't need any ....."

Now I know this seems obvious, but how often can you get an activity to occupy & excite five players at once and keep the language learning drilling away? We even managed to include a player Zooming in to the class :)

Support for this writing task with unfamiliar vocabulary (spelling - we asked each other during the game) on Quizlet = autonomous work possible and another game on the end of that (Match).

Postcard from Wollongong, Australia

Hello all!

How are you?
I enjoy going to school near beach.
I made Australian friends!

See you next year :)

Ceilidh

Making a mobile - butterfly flutter

"This is fun!"

In a bid to brighten up the classroom a little more, Ceilidh and Koutarou gave a helping hand in creating a butterfly mobile to hang up in the classroom (it was also another excuse to bust out the paint brushes and get our fingers dirty!).  We used folded card to draw on 1 wing, then by the magic of mathematics we were able to cut out perfectly symmetrical butterflies with half the work.

Following on from the symmetry theme, instead of painting these butterflies willy-nilly, we painted a pattern onto 1 wing of each butterfly with the intent of pressing the wings together while the paint was still wet to transfer our patterns over onto the opposite wing. It took a couple of attempts before the idea of painting only 1 wing sunk in, while some patterns transferred better then others.

Pressing the wings together

The class was also disturbed by Jim’s ALS ice bucket challenge, which meant we didn’t have the time to assemble the mobile during class. On the other hand, we did get to tip ice cold water all over Jim!

The mobile is now complete and on display by the window, with the butterflies fluttering merrily in the breeze. They can now serve as a reminder to the prospect of spring and sunshine when the cold winter months set in.

The finished product

Cleaning up at Luna

 Observant readers will notice a common thread in these pictures, namely, cleaning up! This is the first song my son ever learned...and I am at a total loss to explain how come.

Whenever we go anywhere, he hunts for a brush, broom or vacuum cleaner and starts doing the rounds. If he can't find anything, he'll grab a stick or a pole, and get busy. Failing that, a cloth and he'll get down on hands and knees for a few laps. The action shot here is at pre-school in Luna, where the alphabet soup is getting the treatment.

Tiny hoons

Before we had all the rain from the typhoon, our plants were looking a bit jaded, so we got the boys to give them a drink. But, the scooter was in much more need of a clean, apparently! As you can see, no nook ignored. The boys also gave themselves and us a hosing down, just for fun :)

On the graded reader

Even reading time becomes an opportunity to tackle dust and cobwebs (we vacuum the joint before & after each day's pre-school!) and if not allowed, a sit down protest. We never did get to the end of the story, but the book is really clean - I think!