KC

Our author for November is Lois Elhert. Elhert’s books are remarkable for their wonderful illustrations. She often uses collage in her illustrations, gluing pieces of paper, fabrics or objects to create vivid and colorful pictures to accompany the text. Ehlert has won several awards including the Cauldecott honour for Color Zoo. Many of Elhert’s books [...]

Throughout the school year, we shall be visiting the park opposite school to observe the changing seasons. As part of our Japanese Culture program, we will be celebrating the coming of Autumn (Aki). Colorful leaves (koyo) are to the Japanese autumn what cherry blossoms are to spring. Throughout the month of October, we shall be [...]

Children seem to have fewer and fewer opportunities to get outdoors and interact with nature. One of the aims of the Elementary School camping club is to give children opportunities to experience the wonder of living in nature even if just for a night or two. There is nothing quite like a good, hard hike, [...]

The Kindergarten children often recall key experiences that they have had in previous schools, whether they were at our ELC or at another school. Today the KC children went with Ms Pender to the ELC to view an outside art gallery of beautiful creations that the ELC children had made. The children were delighted by [...]

Today we had a busy day out, full of nature-watching and adventuring. We started by digging sweet potatoes at a near-by potato field. This is a popular Kindergarten experience in Japanese schools at this time of year, and helps children to understand where food comes from and the cycle of the seasons. We had a [...]

The children have been comparing different writing systems in Japanese and English. We have been talking about the difference between alphabets like the English (Roman) alphabet, katakana and hiragana, and symbol/concept based writing systems such as kanji. We went on a hunt around YIS to search for Japanese writing. The children discovered many different kinds [...]

With the sakura blooming and Spring finally in the air, we decided it was time to prepare our garden allotment for planting. It was a perfect day for gardening. The sun was shining as the children got stuck in. Several teachers stopped on their way by to ask us what we were up to and [...]

We went for a walk around Motomachi to see how people use spaces in clever ways. The children took photographs of the interesting things they saw. When we got back, we printed the photographs. Together, we at the photographs and shared ideas the clever ways of using space. Once the children had had a chance [...]