With Obon just passed, many of the kinder children were still away on vacation this week. Therefore, the kinder 1, 2, and 3 children had a joint lesson today. So, to start the lesson, the children asked introductory questions to each other.
A little demonstration first. The first question was, “What’s your name?” Once answered, the child would ask then pass the ball to someone else, and so on.
The second question was, “What is your favorite food?” They answered, “I like …,” and then other children could comment if they wanted to. “Me, too,” or, “I don’t like ….” The older K3 and some K2 children were good at saying how they felt, and gave the K1 children some confidence to say something.
Next, we looked at a little reading. The kinder 1 class are practicing reading colors for their sports day, so why not let everyone have a go. They were shown a card and a had to read what it said.
Once everyone had made an attempt, the card was turned around and the color shown. If they were correct there was much rejoicing. Again the older children could help the younger if a color was tricky. For example, ‘gray’, most saw ‘gr’ and said ‘green’.
We looked at ‘ay’ and ‘ee’ sounds, then they had to shout out the name of the color from the first 3 letters. “Gra” is gray, “Gre” is green.
After that, we looked at vocabulary. Today we tried to use all the language for all 3 kinder classes. Kinder 1 practiced ‘big’ and ‘small’. Kinder 2, “I have a ….” Kinder 3 asked, “What do you have?”
First, they looked at the cards and decided if the object was big or small. In this case, “It’s a small fish.” Someone then said, “shark, big.” So we practiced, “A shark is a big fish.” 
The cards were placed on the ground and the instructor took one. The children then asked “What do you have?” “I have a big sandcastle,” and the children repeated. Now, the sandcastle was put back, the cards shuffled, and they had to find it.
Choose your card. The other children asked, “What do you have?”
Ooh, “I have a small sea star.” Nice.
Big or small, anything was good.
The older children were encouraged to answer themselves with small hints. They also helped the younger children remember the “I have…” at the start of the sentence.
With the sandcastle found and a small celebration had, we turned to some writing. Again, the 3 levels focused on different things.
Kinder 1 we’re getting used to the shapes of letters by coloring them in. They also said the sounds, “H says h, h, happy,” for example.
Kinder 2 were focusing on writing the letter, stroke order and size. Again saying the sound, in this case “J says j, j, jacket.”
Kinder 3 focused on writing a sentence. For this, they made a sentence, “I have a bike,” or, “I have blocks.” It would be written at the top and they would copy it, focusing on size and the spaces between words.
Everyone did very well with their writing. Shape and size for the younger children is coming on nicely.
With that finished, it was time to say goodbye. The 3 kinder classes got on very well and had good fun talking to each other.
Great job, everyone.
いっぱい食べたよ～！！
おいし～い☆
完食したよ～♪
