The first event was on Tuesday, we have about six children and their mums for the session. We started with a little light hearted warm-up; we'd prepared this huge pretend bento box from which I was able to pull out various food items and see if the children knew what they were. Lot's of fun and surprisingly the children knew quite a lot of the English names for the foods (and weren't afraid to shout them out!)
That of course set us up perfectly for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We followed that with Albie and although I thought it's language is way too difficult the pace and excitment of the reading grabbed the children's attention. We finished with two titles from the Oxford Reading Tree, Six in a Bed and Strawberry Jam.
All in all a fun 30 minutes for all involved...let's hope Saturday is as smooth.

２００９年　８月２５日（火）１１：００～１１：３０
　　　　　　 ８月２９日（土）１０：００～１０：３０　


●●●イングリッシュプール・サマーイベント●●●

えいご絵本よみきかせ会を開催しま～す♪

ポール先生お気に入りの一冊から、大人が読んでも
勉強になるシリーズまでご紹介します。
定員は１０名まで、なんと！＜＜無料＞＞ですよ～☆

絵本の大好きな子供たち！よみきかせに興味のあるお母さん！
ぜひぜひ、ご参加ください♪

もちろんイングリッシュプールに入会していない方でもＯＫです☆
えいご子育てについてご質問があれば、誠意を持ってお答えしたいと思います。
お気軽にどうぞ！


イベントページについて
えいご絵本よみきかせ会PDF ダウンロード (220KB)


お待ちしてま～す☆

Finally we got round to taking some photos of the classroom. They're in black and white because we took them to use in our new flyer/pamphlet which we are busy distributing at the moment.



This is the adult area. The 'antique' table spent most of it's life in a clothing factory cutting room so is very flat and heavily scored! The stools we commissioned from a guy up in Akita prefecture.The ceiling fan we picked up from yahoo! auctions and is a Odelic SH901 for those that are interested (sorry but many people have asked!)



This is looking out of the classroom. What could be called the children's area. We decided that we wanted the children's area to be as clear as possible so we put in a long high shelf to keep the stereo, flashcards and other lesson stuff away from small hands. The low table is yet another 'antique' and functions as a blackboard.



This shot is taken of the entrance area, very stylish don't you agree...? The photos you can see just above the yukari plant, and some unidentified specimen, are of my great grandmother and great grand father when they were babies, so must have been taken about 100 years ago. The photos look great on the wall and are always a talking point with new students.

After the success of installing and running Koha we've seen a lot of interest from the student's mothers about book reading especially the Oxford Reading Tree series, which seems to have received a lot of favourable comments in the Japanese press as most of the mums we speak to know about it.

So we thought we'd share some of our favourite stories in a special event dedicated to story reading on August 25th and 29th. The first book I've chosen The Very Hungry Caterpillar namely because it's a story that everybody probably knows, although possibly not in English! When I've used it in class I've had a lot success naming the food (but pear and plums always leaves them stumped), counting the items and with the slightly older children saying the days of the week. So hopefully this will be a good book to start with.

The second book, or probably books, will be taken from the Oxford Reading Tree. As yet I'm undecided on which stories to use and with so few words in the books I'm going to have to provide a narrative in order to keep interest. I suppose I'm aiming at demonstrating how mum or dad might use the book at home.

The final book will be Albie by Andy Cutbill. Why? Just because I love this book. The story is crazy and really lends itself to reading aloud, even if some of the words are difficult to comprehend the pace and expression of the story keep them hooked to the final Allllbbbiiiiiieeeeee!