Our neighbourhood - urban safari!

On Tuesday, our pre-schoolies 'went bush' - exploring the riverside which is a stone's throw from the school. A week ago we found 'Men at Work' - electricians, builders, bin men etc, on the 'quiet side' of the river.
Today, we had to hold hands tightly as we explored the busy main road, looking for shops and stores. We found all sorts of businesses not very far away, and challenged Naomi to draw a quick picture of each one. We think she did very well, as we told her what we could remember about each one - we went into the supermarket & found fruit & veg., meat, milk etc. In all, we found eleven different places where people work.

Chiaki-sensei in the supermarket

From Naomi's sketches we produced a fantastic flashcard set on Quizlet. Check them out for free (you can 'learn' or 'play') - download them too if you like. If you have an iPhone, you'll need an app eg "flashcard touch" - download them & use at home! Don't just use ours, by the way - whatever you are studying, somebody somewhere has already made a set! There are millions of cards for you to enjoy.

In the hardware store we found lots of colours - carpets, curtains, balls, slippers, and tools - a hammer that took two to pick up! In the DVD store we found comics & books as well as our favourite anime (cartoons). We checked out the 'oden' pot at the convenience store, as well as the ice cream freezer!

colourful carpets

Then there was the petrol station, busy with cars and a hairdresser's. We passed half a dozen restaurants - French, Chinese, fast and slow.

We really enjoyed exploring the shops and talking to people, but the main road is a very busy road. Maybe the most important thing we learned was to wait for the man to go green and beep before we crossed.

First & final sounds - and a tummyache

Another mind-melting day up here in the high hills...don't know why I am always so surprised by the intensity of the heat here. Twenty years and still one the wiser!


Our pre-schoolers started thinking about initial and final sounds today - does a particular sound start a word, or finish it? I have realised that getting 'in' with phonics before their brains are pulped with ridiculous katakana and all the implications that has for poor, bad, mis- and mal-pronunciation, intonation, stress & timing is a wonderful bonus: I don't have to unteach much (OK, maybe parents muddy the water a bit, but nothing systematic at this early age.)

 Important - dealing with the sounds letters represent, not the 'names' of them.  And be consisitent. Pointless if you are going to introduce 'ice cream' as part of your set for single /i/ sound. Think about it - or say "ice" a few times. It does not start with the same sound as {iguana, igloo or  insect}, does it?!


Likewise, we are not talking about spelling. Words like {dog, bag & log} all in in a hard /g/ sound....but so do {vague, league & plague}. Worry about pointing out the challenges actual spellings provide learners with later!

Getting ahead of ourselves a bit there. All our pre-schoolers needed to do was pay attention, best as possible in the heat, and decide if a sound we were focusing on began a word or finished it , and then to colour the picture of the word one of two colours - then all the words beginning with the sound are all the same colour, and all the words ending with it are another. Then maybe we can see a link. Teacher (pre-writing as yet) writes the letter under the picture to the left, or to the right. Which? Let you think about it!


Today's new game was 'Around the houses', which I described in detail a day or two ago. This followed up our first proper turn taking game 'Tummy ache' from Tuesday. Turn-taking, passing things, remembering where you were on the board & which way you were going...and having to put up with something you don't like eg Not having a hissy-fit just because you got boring milk while your nemesis got grape Fanta!

Best part of the game = kids teaching Naomi sensei, who came back from her Tokyo studies today and noticed how much we've all grown!

Pre-schoolers on the buses

Looking for signs of life in our flower beds already! Been a very wet last couple of days here (just rainy, or has the rainy season arrived?). The girls were very excited to see nothing at all - can't wait until we get some shoots appearing.

We were talking about the things we do, and the order in which we do them today in pre-school. Seems sensible to have breakfast after we get out of bed (OK, not always!) etc, and the first time we have asked our little ones to process activities in this way (ie sequence them formally). We also ended up talking about buses a lot - the "Wheels on the Bus" song is a firm favourite, and today no claustrophobia from Hinata so she 'got on' the bus and drove along with us to the shops, stopping to 'buy' lots of stuff. There is an app on my iPhone of this song which is cool, including being able to record your own voice(s).

Without anywhere special in mind, and not a lot of time to spare, we decided we should catch a bus this afternoon - our first time! No seat belts so sit down and hold tight! We watched the driver, and paid when we got off (at the front - we got on at the back). The bus wasn't pink or blue as we'd predicted, but white.

We  got off at Asama, crossed the road carefully at the crossing, and waited for another bus to take us back to school. We sang along on the back seat, and counted HS kids getting on. Ice cream treat from the shop on the way back, paying the man and saying thank you :)  A very exciting little excursion and a nice change in routine!