What can you see?

Can you find all the items listed with the picture?
What colour are they?
What is your favourite thing?
What is the strangest thing?
How many of these things can you find in your house or garden?

Thank you Liz George for this lovely idea!

Nuts for Nikko

Despite the main season for visitors being Autumn, I knew that my best chance to explore the area was last week over Obon break. As a typhoon was approaching and was supposed to hit over the week of holiday, my cancelled plans for a hike up Mt. Fuji left my itinerary with a gaping hole. Luckily, just as it is a couple of hours south of Tokyo to visit Fuji, it was also a few hours to make my way up to Nikko - a place that had come highly recommended ever since I arrived in Japan.

A wonder of gold, nature, and sweaty tourists, Nikko is the perfect (relatively) undiscovered spot to beat out anything that is already in Japan’s usual tourism circuit. With shrines dating back to the year 767 and the mausoleum of the first Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate: Tokugawa Ieyasu, Nikko is dotted with 103 temples and shrines and a history that will leave you speechless. Alongside the abundance of cultural features, Nikko is amassed with nature. Between the waterfalls and mountains, rivers and lakes, it really is a place that has it all - a fact that is continuously vouched for by a long list of names - of which I have now added my name to the bottom of.

Spring Planting weather topic

This is the perfect time of year to exploit the change of weather and do a little planting. I also find that this time of year lends itself well to study the weather topic as everyday seems to have a season in itself. Today, rain, last week wind and sun, and snow still fresh in our memories.

My younger students have been making these delightful little planters showing the change of seasons. Also a good oportunity to talk about the natural environment, which we did before hand whilst pouring over some pictures of the outdoors. Excitement is mounting as we look forward to all of the fun things we can do outside!

Well, that is if it stops raining that is!

Tana