New Hope School News - September 2011 (English)

Welcome to our first letter of the new school year! As you may know, we opened an elementary school this month in the same facilities as our preschool. We have eight students representing five nations! Our school is indeed international. The first few weeks we have focused our studies on ancient Egypt. Did you know that in the process of making a mummy, the brains were removed through the nose? Yuck! Our students know that bit of trivia as well as many other things about one of the oldest and greatest civilizations.

Preschool is also in full swing with 18 students from six nations. We are making “Me Books” this week and learning about what makes each of us special and unique.
Our staff has increased to include a Japanese teacher, a music/art teacher, and another Kids’ English and Afternoon Preschool teacher. We are having a great time learning from one another and from our students. If you see a new face, say hello and introduce yourself!

We are running an autumn campaign now. New students can save from ¥29,400 to ¥55,125 depending on which course they sign up for. As always, current students who introduce a new student receive ¥10,000 worth of gift cards. Contact us for details.


Here are some online resources you might be interested in.

• Tokyo Art Beat has a listing of kid-friendly art events in the Tokyo area. (bilingual) http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/list/event_kids

• The Education in Japan Community Blog is a collection of posts related to kids and education in Japan. Recently, it has featured lots of news about the nuclear situation and how it is affecting children in Japan. http://educationinjapan.wordpress.com/

Please take care as the weather cools off. Feel free to contact us any time. We love to hear from you.

Insect Art and Z for Zoo

This week's preschool theme was insects. We collected insects, learned about insect body parts and their diets, and discovered how to tell the difference between insects and other creepy-crawlies.

We collected leaves, twigs, acorns, and chestnuts at the park to make insect collages. Can you spot the ants, butterflies, dragonflies, stag beetles, and rhinoceros beetles? (Click on the photo to see it larger.)

Insects have antennae as you can see from the butterfly and the bee pictured here.

Just look at those beautiful butterflies.

The letter of the week in afternoon preschool was Z. The children built a zoo for their animals, being careful to keep predators and pray away from each other.

June Snapshots

I haven't updated for quite some time so here are some snapshots from the end of June. I'll get summer school photos and comments up soon.

Keep the ball on the mat!

Rolling!

Matching toy animals with creation cards



Wheee!


Peek-a-boo!


Tug of war


Through the spider web


U is for Umbrella


Listening for color and size


Teamwork

Our only school bus


Saturday Preschool: learning about magnetism and flotation


Saturday Preschool: filtering dirty water

Group shot at end-of-term party

"S" is for Spider Web (and Snake)

In our afternoon preschool program, we introduce a letter each week. This week's letter is "S" so we made spider webs by dipping yarn in white paint and applying the paint to dark construction paper.

First, use the yarn to practice the letter of the week.

Then, holding the two ends of the yarn, dip it into white paint and lay it across the paper to leave a "strand" of the spider web. Repeat until finished.

The children loved this activity!

I'm editing this post to add another S activity that we did. "Snake" is another great word that begins with "s" especially since snakes make the same sound that the letter does. For this activity, we had dip a finger in glue and write a large "s" on construction paper (We wrote a light pencil guideline for the three-year-olds). Then they laid a piece of yarn on the s-shaped glue and stuck it down. Finally they drew the outline of a snake around the yarn and added snake-like patterns. A fun multi-sensorial way to practice the letter of the week.