Lessons
September 15, 2007
This week has been full of hilarious events at school. I’ll share some with you.
Monday: Futaba Nursery School
On Mondays I go to Futaba and I teach the 5 year olds. Like all of my kids, I love them, they are just adorable. When I went into the classroom I was getting ready for class and the poor things were exhausted. They have been practicing for their Sports Festival and are outside everyday in the heat practicing, practicing, practicing… They would hardly sing or dance with me. I made a new game up though and they were getting into it. Finally, something woke them up!
At the end of my lesson, I always get many hugs. Today was no different. My hugs were a little different though because instead of hugging and then letting go, they stayed attached; they were SMELLING me! Yes, I’m serious. In Japanese one hugged, smelled, and told the others. They all came and did the same and the response was a lot of Japanese followed by “American.” Haha, it was funny! Funnier even when they moved on to my hands and started inhaling them and repeating, American.” It took me a minute but I realized that what they were smelling was my perfume. It was classic.
September 15, 2007
This week has been full of hilarious events at school. I’ll share some with you.
Monday: Futaba Nursery School
On Mondays I go to Futaba and I teach the 5 year olds. Like all of my kids, I love them, they are just adorable. When I went into the classroom I was getting ready for class and the poor things were exhausted. They have been practicing for their Sports Festival and are outside everyday in the heat practicing, practicing, practicing… They would hardly sing or dance with me. I made a new game up though and they were getting into it. Finally, something woke them up!
At the end of my lesson, I always get many hugs. Today was no different. My hugs were a little different though because instead of hugging and then letting go, they stayed attached; they were SMELLING me! Yes, I’m serious. In Japanese one hugged, smelled, and told the others. They all came and did the same and the response was a lot of Japanese followed by “American.” Haha, it was funny! Funnier even when they moved on to my hands and started inhaling them and repeating, American.” It took me a minute but I realized that what they were smelling was my perfume. It was classic.
Tuesday: Tomiyama Nursery SchoolI teach the 5 year olds here also. These children were also exhausted from for their Sports Festival. They came in and did not want to talk or move. They just sat there. It was like pulling teeth to have a conversation. I taught them a new song and any other time they would have been all about it. Not today! They were just dead. At the end of the lesson time I said, “We have time for one more song!” Usually they start naming suggestions. Today they crossed their arms to resemble and X and said “NO.” The teacher and I laughed so hard.
Wednesday: Joto Nursery SchoolI teach the 3, 4, and 5 year olds here. The 3 year olds are always a trip because they are so little and excited about everything that we do. I love it! Today we traced one of them on paper to make a life size human body and then we colored in the hair, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hands and feet. I labeled them in English. It was so funny to watch them color in that person. The end result resembled something from a horror movie, but it was great.
The 4 and 5 year olds are always a challenge because I have a few high maintenance children in there. Since I can’t speak Japanese and they don’t speak English, I can’t communicate like I would in my regular classroom. It’s not an ideal situation but I’ve found some things that work. We did the same lesson that I did with the three year olds. It turned out a bit better, not so crazy looking since the kids had more of a concept of what a human should look like.
Thursday: Hikari Nursery School
I have the 3 year old for 15 minutes to sing with. They are so funny and so excited about life. We sing and dance and have a great time. They all want to hold my hand and touch me. I love it. Next I have the 4 year olds, then the 5 year olds. In both classes we did the trace the body lesson and draw/color the parts. It went along with a book that we read. By the end of the lesson my kids were remembering the English. Yea!
Friday: Midori Nursery School
I have the same schedule here as I do at Hikari. My 3 year olds sing and afterwards they all want to give me hugs. Today I even got a couple of kisses. They are precious. My 4 year olds made Monster Pizzas today. We made a recipe together last week and today we cooked. That was really run. It was like being back at home. I borrowed this idea from a friend who teaches kindergarten at my school. The kids had a great time.
My 5 year olds are researching about monkeys right now. Together we looked at monkey pictures and short video clips that I had on my computer from when I went to Shodoshima Island. I am teaching the teachers about research and how I do it in my classroom so they wanted me to take the children through the steps. It’s fun to do with the kids, and surprisingly easy with the language barrier!
That’s all for my week. Maybe you’ll get a kick out of it. I sure did. I usually don’t write about my school life, but some of these things were just too funny not to mention!
1 comment:
I liked seeing what you do at school. Good teaching is good teaching in any language!
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