Roar into another I-Spy challenge!

The reason why slippers were invented? Lego, the domestic landmines!

How long will take you to find ALL the objects on the list?

Thank you Liz!

Postcard from...the Lego Shop

I'm in the Lego Shop in Karuizawa now. I can see Toy Story's caracter Lego block. The weather is cloud. I'm with my wife and son. I'm taking my son's pictures and watch playing my son's lego block. I'm staying an hour in Lego shop.

I was in my house yesterday. I made a big sock from newspaper with my son, for Santa's presents.

I am getting a rare Pokemon tomorrow.

I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday.

Masahiro

Rei's Pirate Diary

This is an adaptation of Rei's journal from last week. Rei is the big white monster, with his little friend Shin-chan. They had an interesting rainy Sunday morning with Lego. Read on!

Ayane's lego comic

This was Ayane's first story using lego comic builder. The aim was to re-use direct speech from her last graded reader (OUP Story Tree "The Red Planet") to provide the narrative.

As with Hibiki's story (below), she was sidetracked rather a lot by the giggles to be had manipulating the comic, instead of being able to throw in lots of English. Next time, I hope!

The key though, was finding a medium where we could recycle vocabulary & phrases and use them meaningfully and memorably. Nothing more enjoyable then than building your own story - so, job done.

I did not get involved with production, as her aunt Keiko is PC literate & did this as a team. They did brainstorm the story though this was in Japanese...not main aim of the lesson afterall.

"Our car" - a lego comic from Hibiki

This is Hibiki's first 'go' using the lego comic maker online. Using all the tools was a bit tricky, and frustrating when things disappeared or couldn't be edited smoothly.

She used words and phrases from her story tree reader to provide the dialogue/story.

In the process she learned keyboard layout and other editing shortcuts, and used the mouse to manage the online tools.

I think she did really well, and I am looking forward to her next story.

From Reader to Writer

Toru's study buddy didn't turn up (can't really blame him, it's bitterly cold and snowing - not the best weather for cycling to Luna) so we revisited our last lesson of 2011 and did another Lego story.

Again, we trawled through a reader we have already read (this time "Land of the Dinosaurs" - OUP Story Tree Orange series book 3) and picked out some key dialogue to go with background & characters he decided on. The story, of course, is totally different to anything with the dinosaurs, but that's the whole point - we can recycle the language and make it so much more personal/memorable with our own spin on it.

How much help from me? Not a lot, really, after I showed him the main tool box, though we did need to scoot along a bit to finish in time & print it out nicely to take home.

I think this is a really cool piece of work - what do you think?

Making stories with Lego comics

Last night of classes, and 66% absenteeism a bit annoying - if I have to be here...

Anyway, chance to try out a cool site I came across via twitter a day or two ago (sorry, forgot the source tweeter - going to do something about that for regular readers in the new year). Lego comics is fairly limited in that it represents a 'flat' storyboard. Other animated ones give you more tools for movement & allow you to add audio.

For the job at hand today though, more than enough. I wanted my student to 'transfer' a story from his most recent reader to the simple choices presented -  so instead of characters going to "The Red Planet" his became an "Island Adventure". In particular, I wanted my student to snip chunks of conversation (locating the direct speech in the book) and present it into bubbles for the comic. Oh yes, in Japanese comics the panels are read in a different order - something to remember.

Annoyingly, the entire story disappeared with only 2 letters of his name left to type...so we re-booted and he directed me with background, characters and text (actually good review!). We also had to guess what the tabs did across the top (no text to help us decide which one was 'save', 'export' or 'delete'! The printed result was lovely quality which impressed us both (something for mum to admire, and make his absentee mates jealous when we get together again in January!)

What do you think of our end result?

Introducing our pre-school teacher - Eriko

 It's about time we talked about Eriko!

Who is she?

She's our very own, properly qualified teacher who has joined us to co-teach our immersion pre-schoolers this year. How come you haven't heard about her yet? She's very good at avoiding the limelight, and very good at looking after our tiny ones. No drama, no shouting, no panic...sensible, organised, and lovely (cute!)

So how are our young gentlemen responding? As you can see, they are already picking flowers! What else are they up to? Well, more or less stopped crying as soon as they enter the building - Eriko's shoulder has been a damp place so far. We have been building stuff - but bizarrely more intent on cleaning stuff up (must be a world first that Super Simple Songs' most popular song is the 'clean up' one?)

We've tried the big guns - our rather large case of Lego: Zoo of Champions! The even larger 'castle' - we can build it like Bob the Builder and it comes down even quicker (and harder!). Magneto things - half the room long.

How about reading a book or doing some drawing, tracing, colouring? Uh uh?! No thank you! Diving into every box that we have within arm's reach and flicking every switch (fan, fish tank, PC, CD player etc? Oh Yes! Chucking things (projector on the wrong shelf) and eating lunch as fast as possible? Grabbing the camera and taking control of the DVD player?

Eriko is super patient and quietly in control of things; it is very reassuring for us that she is very good indeed with little children and does not panic. Her teaching background is quite obvious, too. Quick nappy change? OK. Spilt a drink? OK. Lego everywhere? OK. Having her nose pulled? OK.... I think we got lucky! Why not come and have a look for yourselves?

Textbooks keep you fit

Kevin rebuilds Luna - with Lego

Kevin & Jim found out on Thursday that emptying our corner classroom of it's contents beat a session at the gym! We need the room back in service before the weekend, as we will be hosting First Certificate examinations...

Over seven years it's no surprise we have 'collected' a lot of stuff; we can tell you now it is quite heavy and needs several trips to the new Luna, where we unceremoniously dumped everything on the floor - place yet to get it's cosmetic redo.

Thanks Kevin for making this labour enjoyable. Playing with the Lego an extra bonus ;)