First day of Summer School 2014

Today was the first day of Summer School at Ohana International School. We missed some of our friends who are not coming back but were happy to see almost our entire class will be here for some of the Summer School programme.

The theme for this week is called “I can speak some Japanese” which is part of our Japanese Immersion programme at this time. Hisami is the lead teacher at for this week and she presented us with an activity for Father’s Day. We made a Father’s Day card and decorated the card, which is in the shape of a neck tie, with stickers and we drew a face for our dads. This is going to be a gift for our dads so we don’t want to talk about it too much.

We enjoyed playing with the Japanese Hiragana blocks on another activity table. There were wooden families from Egypt, India, Africa, Japan and Europe which we used together with the blocks. On the mat, we sang a lovely new song to welcome everyone and ask them their names, in Japanese. It went like this:

“Anata onamae wa, ara suteki na onamae ne”. We had to say our names and our friends sang to us. Hisami held a microphone to pretend that we were on Japanese Idol and we sang into the microphone when it was our turn. This song is going to be our morning song this week.

We read the ‘Very Hungry Caterpillar’ story in Japanese with background music and some one else reading it to us. Hisami held the book while the story was being told and we listened to the man’s voice. It was the first time that we had listened to someone else telling us a story, via audio. Today we were lucky that the rain stayed away so we were able to go to the park.

Before we had our lunchtime, we sang some Japanese songs. We sang “Gu choki pade”, “Obento bakko ni” and “Genkotsu yama” with actions. Koh chan loves “Gu choki pade” and Liam loves “Obento bako ni”.

We read “Daruma san” which is a beautiful story about ‘daruma’. ‘Daruma’ is a good luck doll which people place in their businesses and homes at the beginning of each or year. The story around ‘Draum’ is that it will bring good luck into your home and prosperity into your business for the coming year. When you buy ‘Daruma’ from the shop, the eyes are white. You then draw in one eye and at the end of the year, if your dreams or wishes came true, you fill in the other eye. This story is a repetitive story so we could join and repeat the words. Each time ‘Daruma’ did a different action e. g. he fell down, he was squashes like a pancake, he made wind, he stretched etc.

We had a fun day today and are looking forward to learning more Japanese this week during Summer School.

Love always Shelley, Hisami, Nanako, Sharee, Liezel, Ayaka and Goh.