Postcard from...Arundel, England

I enjoy here!!

See you soon!!

Hinata

Hinata's favorite song - Cause and Effect

 My favorite song is C.A.E. "Cause and Effect" is full name of this songs. Misekai was released this song in May 2023. I lke this song lyrics which were written by Amarashi who was inspired by Neg's illustraion and he made sound.

This song got 1,000 Repost and 18,000 likes on twitter, and 340,000 view on youtube.

Amarashi said about this song "Salvation is not the only beautiful ending". I think this song give us coriage.

I like this song, and I'll continue to listen to this song.

Posted for Hinata

Hinata's musical postcard

 

Dear Jim,

I went to a big music festival in this weekend. First day, I enjoyed my favorite artist live. I like this artist more.

Today I went to the world Natural Heritage in this city. That's place is one of Japan's most beautiful and unspoiled national parks. I enjoyed the view and take many picture.

I will do my homework tomorrow. Because I have a lot of homework but I didn't do my homework in today and yesterday. I want do that tomorrow.

Thank you

Hinata's country guide to - The UK

 

Hinata's travel guide to - The Vatican

 

Hinata's UK travel plan

Canterbury cathedral

First, I will fly to London. Then, I will take a train east to Canterbury, because I want to see the cathedral.Thomas Becket was murdered in the cathedral in 1170 after quarrelling with his former friend, King Henry II.

Cambridge

Next day, I will take a train north to Cambridge, because I want to visit this university. I took the Cambridge English exam in Matsumoto. Then, I will take a train north to Sheffield, because I want to visit this city hall. Sheffield is famous for steel and engineering. My English teacher comes from there.

Snowdon Mountain Railway

After that, I will take a train west to Llanberis in Wales, because I want to take a steam train, up the Snowdon Mountain Railway.

Edinburgh

The day after, I will take a train to Scotland and visit the capital, Edinburgh. There is a Festival every year and also the Military Tattoo. Finally I will visit Aberdeen, because I want to have a look around the university, and then fly back to London from Dyce Airport.

by Hinata

Plating up the 2015 Rugby World Cup - #CarryThemHome

Unless you have been hiding under a rock over the last few days, you will be aware that the 2015 Rugby World Cup is in full swing, with World Cup history being made in the South Africa vs Japan game. A game that will be talked about for years to come, and deservedly so with such a magnificent performance from the Brave Blossoms! There may be a few late nights with eyes glued to screens over the coming month for Damian and Jim.

Who's going to win this group?

Rugby is still a growing sport here in Japan, and in an attempt to raise awareness of the sport (especially as Japan will be hosting the next tournament in 2019!), we got some of our students involved in a workshop on the theme of "Countries and Flags". Most of our students were unaware that the World Cup is going on, let alone the 20 countries involved. I hoped to change all that recruiting some help from a few keen students. I even wore my full rugby kit for the entire day in honour of the occasion!

With 20 national flags and home jerseys to colour and sort, it was quite the task for Kahina, Hinata and Hikari. Since there were 4 of us, me included, we assigned a knock-out group for each person to focus on and got to work! We ran into a bit of trouble when Kahina chopped one of the kits in half, but thankfully, after having a closer look, it turned out to be the French one.

A proud smile!

The real challenge came however when we came to matching the kits to their national flags. Some of the colour schemes are not too dissimilar to each other and even Damian sensei got in a muddle at times. We got there eventually through some good guess work and trial and error. In hindsight writing the countries on the reverse may have been a good idea...

How many more upsets will there be? Who's going to come out on top on the 31st of October? What are your predictions for the Rugby World Cup?

The final product

Better than karaoke - What do you have?

Everybody Up is a popular series here at Luna and after watching the following clip you can understand why. The songs are wonderful and allow for us to add our own actions to get our students interacting with each other. The following video is from my new Monday class and there's no lack of enthusiasm! Leave a comment of your favourite song from the Everybody Up series.

ghosts?!

I think you can see we had a lot of fun with our new topic yesterday - we will be talking about our bodies and doing more cool stuff. The trick I learned from my daughter's kindy was to use rubber bands as well as string to prevent tearing.

 

If you have got any cool masks you have made, why not share them?

First footprints are the best!

This morning we waited for the sun to warm up a little bit before our pre-schoolies togged up for a wintry walk around the neighbourhood. It was beautiful, fairly warm, with the sound of people digging their paths clear & snow melting & dripping from rooves.

Plenty of snowball ammunition, which Sota aimed exclusively at Jim :) When we got to the river, we found a new target - the frozen river itself. Icebergs to break off as we bombed it with big dollops from above. The Troll kept his head in. With Wellies on we gingerly slipped down to the riverbank and made the first footprints in the pristine snow; always the best! It was a bit deep - spare socks and a drying rack when we got back...but who cares when you're having this much fun!?

Along our way we saw bitterns, a heron, and lots of little tweetie-pies looking for food. One big kite was looking at them hungrily too!

We left a mini snowman on the bridge. He might last longer than our footprints? If it snows again tonight, we might not find him though!

See the whole set here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=34774&id=125002814212039&saved#!/album.php?aid=34774&id=125002814212039

Pre-school avatars : )

Full size avatars & beginner electricians

Apprentice electricians

 I was digging in boxes this morning before pre-school - you do that a lot when you've moved - looking for something or other, and instead found a cool bit of kit that I've never used. It's kind of hollow, neon spaghetti...with various kinds of connections to make interesting shapes with. I wondered if this might entice S away from mummy more easily this morning - worked a treat! He was so engrossed in it, mummy leaving was an inconvenience to his great tubing connecting plan! Boo hoo mummy!

Where's Morph?!

After a good night's sleep I knew I wanted to exploit the board some more (addicted!) - and this brilliant picture has me laughing still. Any fans of Tony Hart will recognise a "Morph" aspect to this shot. Classic moment, though I do say so myself. S was so thrilled with his life-size avatar he demanded a set, which he called his older & younger brothers. Naomi-sensei & I looked like slugs, and H drew two goats (not sure why!). On paper, S will not engage. Standing up & face on to his medium, imagination run riot :)

Wonderwall - A to Z at head height

Because we often have exams at the school, I don't want to plaster the walls with posters which we'll have to take down (and damage my fab paint job). While we were having lunch I realised I could probably just about squeeze our very nice A-Z flashcards across the wall, if they were on hooks. I was about half a centimetre short, but Y and Z are usually very close together, who will notice? I don't like big cards on the floor because if a kid jumps on one, they can squirt out from underneath and cause a nasty crash. They also get tatty very quickly. Head height is a very nice angle to work at.

H checks a vowel sound

The game we played? Matching initial vowel sounds of other words we know (and some new ones) with the samples left hanging up. Next time we mix up the order.

Trainspotting

MosBurger's waiting room!

Platform three at Matsumoto station, just before eleven o'clock in the morning is the place to be!

We bundled up very warmly, and toddled off across the road to stand at the bus stop - just as the freezing rain started to come down. Brrr. The kids piled into MosBurger's heated entrance while Jim kept his eye up the road to Asama onsen.

We jumped onto the back seats and enjoyed the warm ride into the city centre, passing a number of our familiar landmarks along the way - mobile phone shop, hardware store, supermarket, cranes & diggers.

Back seat gang

We took the escalators up to the concourse, and the lift down to the platforms. We found Super Azusa & Shinano trains arriving from Shinjuku & Nagoya, as well as local trains on other platforms; we waved at them as they left, then welcomed the trains going the other way as well. The driver waved to us from his perch on a Super Azusa; so did the guard as the last carriage shot past on the way to Tokyo. Brilliant!

E351 series Super Azusa - platform 2

We saw one train going through a giant trainwash, and saw lots of others (we counted twelve) waiting or being shunted around. Sota knew all the trains' names, as well as all the Thomas ones. Eleanor and Hina were keen to stay behind the yellow line! Eleanor got a stunner off the ticket barrier - walloped shut in her face because Jim had the wrong ticket. Oops - not funny for Eleanor, as it sent her flying & was a real surprise...her nose is still red like Rudolph's :(

Chilling on platform 3!

Snack time in the warmth of the bus station (we saw a spotty bus on the way back from the station - Kevin says it had chicken pox?!) where there were lots of old ladies! We had time to kill so we popped up to the seventh floor in the lift and jumped on the escalators all the way down - no window shopping! Back seat gang again back to Luna - Sota fell asleep it was so nice & cosy.

Spotty bus spotted!

A great morning's trainspotting - beats learning the alphabet :)

Sota in September

We welcomed Sota to our little coven called pre-school last Friday, and a torrid time did he have. My oh my. Never actually seen a child wail themself to sleep before. Poor lad was distraught when mummy left. AS I was the only person he knew, he was naturally dangling from my neck most of the day - only really letting go to join in a run around towards the end of our day. He promised to come back today and play with "Thomas" - train bonkers - today.



For sure we had a few tears again this morning, but didn't last long, quickly joining in with the girls in their new challenge - finding matching pictures and circling them. He quickly got the hang of that and we all settled down to a number of tricky pics!



Everyone is doing really well in their bathroom training - only trouble is when everyone decides they want to go at the same time! Bit difficult to prioritise three year-old claims of urgency! Neither do we want to rush things along - very important they get the space & time they need to start managing this function. All in all, I think they are coping very well (touch wood, OK?).

I don't want to go to school today

I saw the Boomtown Rats perform "I don't like Mondays" in Bradford in 1985. I actually saw the Almighty Sir Bob G in the pub round the corner of the gig about half an hour before the start. Before he was famous famous, before Live Aid & the TV stuff, before his stunning autobiography. Still too important to go and say hello to. Who wants to talk to students?


When that song was a hit, I was only vaguely aware of the backstory. Seems America is reminded almost annually. As a teacher, I am acutely sensitive to that emotion.


As one of our pre-schoolers arrived I picked up there was a vibe. We have to know if a child has had a bad night, or is off their food or something else is going on. Thankfully, we were told. Pointless confronting any issue like that head on, and even if you do not 'know', it is a teacher's job to assess or suss this kind of stuff out pdq. Can't? You are in the wrong job. Seriously. If you can't read your kids, you are not capable of doing the first part of your job. Care.

So we had a young lady who had a birthday yesterday, and probably didn't enjoy having to share her presents/private space...with exactly the same people she is going to spend today with. Who would?!

As a teacher though, how do you manage that? Can you lunge into your game plan regardless? Can you go toe to toe with an unhappy young learner? Any "Yes" answers need to sit back a bit, I think. however, thee answer is not an unconditional surrender either. You always need to have a reliable (and recent) success to fall back on, one that engages as much as possible and that does not have unhappy connotations - tricky!


You have to weigh up what you are trying to achieve long-term with what you can realistically achieve on the day. I suggest avoiding a short-term melt-down. The particular child isn't going to benefit much from a "yada" day full of tears and remorse, after all. Your other students are not going to go home with a happy story to tell either, are they? Problem you need to assess is whether or not you have a bigger issue to defuse, or it was just a "wrong side of bed" situation.

What did we do today? Not half as much, educationally, as we hoped. Did our "I want to stay at home" youngster miss mummy at all? No, not really - a bit sniffy at lunch time when energy levels were a bit low. What do you do then? Don't panic - stick to your routine, don't get ambitious about new stuff, lend the lead to your children. "Which songs do you want to dance to again?" etc.

We are lucky at Luna - we have a lot of space a ton of brilliant resources to call into use...and a bit of experience in these things. Tears today we had none.

Birthday bonanza - three times three, plus one

Today we celebrated four birthdays all happening within a week, within the pre-school, and invited friends to come and join us for the afternoon. Altogether, twenty little & large ones made up our birthday bash.

Our preparations were very disrupted as Yuki couldn't join us - Hijiri caught a bug he doesn't want to share - and therefor couldn't take care of food & 'crowd control'.

Our mums stepped up to the task but a flat battery saw lunch stalled in Jusco & the cake in danger of melting; indeed we all melted with the heat, even with the extra shade we put up along the riverbank. It was impractical to try & play the games we intended.

The food did make it just in time, and we had a lovely chatty lunch with the children sharing nicely and asking for things politely. I culture shocked my own daughter eating grapes, skin & all. Why wouldn't you?!
We found relief from the blazing sun in our great big main room, teaching our visitors a couple of our favourite songs and getting mums to roll around on the floor singing "ten in the bed"/get chased around the room playing "Mr. Wolf"! The splendid chocolate cake, with a nice pink 3 on it, met with approval and stuck to fingers & faces just right!
Check out all the photos on our Facebook page right here!
Of course we had a good sing for Naomi, Hinata, Eleanor and Sota - a great big  

Happy Birthday  

What's the time, Mr. Wolf?

With these hands

With these hands I can paint without restraint;
With these hands I can eat any treat.

With these hands I can touch much too much;
With these hands I can hold, but I need to be told 'two hands!'



With these hands I can 'be nice' or snatch,
With these hands I can throw dice and catch.

With these hands I can share;
With these hands I can show you that I care.

With these hands I can put on my dress;
With these hands I do can really make a mess.

With these hands I can show you I care;
With these hands you know I am there.

With these hands I can build, colour and glue;
With these hands I will forever be tactile and true.

Now Hinata-chan, this is true;
Wash your hands - we love you!!!

Diggers & wheelbarrows

Originally uploaded by ijiwaru jimbo

Today was such a lovely sunny morning we couldn't stay indoors forever. We'd sung the "How's the weather?" song and got a resounding "It's SUNNY today!" response. We 'did' our letter /Mm/ words and could see the mountains clearly from our big windows, with their snowy peaks against the blue sky.

Shoes and coats on for a wander down the riverside, where some workmen were spending our taxpayers money, slowly. The girls were really interested to see the men choosing the right sized rocks for the holes they had, and then knocking them into position & cementing them there. They had a dirty old truck, a clean yellow digger, and an old blue wheelbarrow to help them.

We sang songs from the Billy Goats DVD as we walked - "There's green green grass, over the river" we had to change to 'brown'; we looked for a nasty Troll under the bridge but couldn't see him; and we sang about the 3 Billy Goats living on the mountain yonder!

On the way back, we found a ladybird, which bit Naomi. We counted its black spots before it flew away. We also looked at the buds on the trees - spring is coming, so we'll have to come back and check on their progress in becoming leaves soon.

Back at school we finished some colouring - today we read a Potato Pals book about "In the morning" and our daily routines. We also had a big I Spy with /Mm/, /Ss/ & /Rr/ words...and so much more. The walk was the highlight though, as you can see. We haven't been out for ages and now the weather is getting a bit nicer, maybe we can explore some more soon!

Happy New Year!

Trains, vowels and a picnic in November

Hijiri joined us in pre-school on Tuesday - he's been away for a while and was really sweet to see the girls literally take his hand and guide him back into the swing of things; it didn't take him long to get totally immersed in things and 'forget' about mummy! (He was going to come today, too, but mummy got a cold & best stay away from school).

As we know he into his trains, we showed him our train set and he helped us cobble it together - trains crashing into each other, bridges and tunnels in no time at all. Carnage!

We showed him a couple of our favourite songs and games, and he particularly liked the physical aspects of the Hokey Kokey and our vowel race, as you can see.

The weather today was so nice we just couldn't bear to stay inside; we took a blanket and had a picnic lunch on the riverbank outside Luna. The girls enquired about Trolls, but we couldn't see any :) It was a great change of scenery for us, with butterflies and ants to watch. There was a plane circling around, and a troop of kindy kids paraded past us too.

Lovely funshine and healthy appetites, all made us a bit sleepy in the afternoon. We know how Goldilocks felt when she gate-crashed the three bears' house - we watched her on DVD and started to remember the songs! Creative & problem solving puzzles are in high demand, no less so today. A new 60 piece one posed no real challenge, apart from size - took up the whole table!