We had been learning about insects for the past several weeks. This week we had our class meeting to decide what we will learn about next. Our new topic is…EARTH!
We used Google Earth to look at our Earth. We looked for K2 teachers’ houses, Amicus Kindergarten and each friend’s house. We used the sentences, “Where do you live?” “I live in ______.”
We are getting ready for Family Sports Day.
K2s are continuing to learn phonics and sight words. New words this week: what, a, in, my, your, have. We are making a new sight words book, too.
August birthday party…
We are learning a lot from friends’ Show and Tell and enjoying writing in our journals.
Though our summer vacation was sudden and short, we felt like we have not seen each other for a while. Many of the students were excited to come to school and enjoy time together. We teachers were so glad to see everyone healthy with bright, smiling faces!
We enjoyed taking care of our garden again. We saw how much our watermelon has grown and enjoyed observing plants’ roots (ねっこ), stems (くき), and leaves (はっぱ).
We picked our watermelon. K2 friends enjoyed smelling and cutting it open. It looks so delicious!おいしい！
Some friends tasted our basil parsley and basil. Some friends liked the taste, others said, “にがい！It’s bitter!”
The students were happy to see the horses and UMABU teachers.
We played outside a lot last Monday. Friends enjoyed doing jump rope, catching insects, and playing dodge ball.
Lunch outside.
We had our Class Meeting to talk about our next topic… “What do you want to know?” “What do you want to learn?” K2 friends have many ideas. たのしみ!
We really enjoyed doing many activities together. We continued learning about life cycles of insects and added two new learning activities- “Math Minutes” and Calligraphy.
We met our calligraphy teacher, Mr. Nakasone. We talked about the difference between hiragana and katakana. Students showed Mr. Nakasone their writing skills- hiragana or katakana or English letters or even numbers. We are looking forward to our next lessons with Mr. Nakasone!
We made our own ladybug pointers for our “ladybugs Fly” poem. We enjoyed playing “Where’s the ladybug?” and using our sight words sentences “The ladybug is on the…” and pointing to the place. (i.e. The butterfly is on the chair!”)
Learning sentences.
We started to read our original sight words books! We’ve also been enjoying learning phonics and some sign language （手話） K2s can practice our ABC phonics song at home and enjoy other songs, too 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2frjzrC5Jg
K2 students each made a paper mache butterfly and chrysalis to finish our butterfly life cycle project.
Recently we have been learning about the life cycle of butterflies.
This week we were busy learning about the life cycles of grasshoppers, ladybugs, beetles and cicadas and making our own research books about it.
We’ve also been learning about which insects around us are dangerous and which are safe. We made our own dangerous and safe insects from recycle material. We put them on our wall so K1 friends can learn, too.
We will start counting the days of school so we are learning our numbers in English more. K2s are growing their number sense, too.
K2s started learning sight words (common words found in children’s books) and working on phonics more. Please ask your child to teach you the “Butterfly, butterfly” song, and the “See the Bug” poem.
We took a nature walk and found many Oogomadara chrysalis’ (pupas), and other insects. We are enjoying discovering insects around us everyday!
We read Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. Later we made our names with “Very hungry caterpillars”. K2s looked for the letters of their name on recycle materials to cut and paste on to their caterpillars. We learned which name caterpillars are small, medium, large and short, medium, long.
We learned about “Tanabata” or the Star Festival. We wrote wishes in Japanese and in English: ~がほしいです。(I want a…) / ～になりたいです。(I want to be a…) / ～がじょうずになりたいです。(I want to be good at…)
We participated in G5s Zoom meeting with students in Taiwan. Anna and Kan gave a special message to the Taiwan students from our MPH.
In June K2 friends were busy getting to know again after being at home for so many months. We enjoyed many activities every day! Every morning we came to school and get ready for the day. K2 friends have enjoyed taking nature walks, exploring our school campus, playing outside, doing P.E., learning about insects in English through art, literacy, music, social studies, life skills, and math.
Exploring Amicus
Exploring around the main campus
Making signs for our garden:)
Once the students because used to K2 routines we had our first K2 Meetings. We talked about what the students want to learn about. There were many topics they wanted to research. The most popular topic was insects. They wanted to learn about how to take care of them, how the live, where they live, what they eat, how they grow, and which insects are safe to touch and which are dangerous. So we started our research activities.
K2 First meeting
What is your favorite insect ? My favorite insect is…
★ Insects Team (grasshopper, butterfly, cicada, beetle, and ladybug) Mission: spell your insect’s name, tell what your insect eats, and draw 2 kinds of your insect. After the Mission they did their first presentation in English!
★Life Cycle of a Butterfly: egg – caterpillar – chrysalis – coming out (of the chrysalis) – butterfly
★Making Insects Bodies- learning about insects body part
In July we are looking forward to learning phonics and sight words in English Time.
