Friday, July 1: Miscommunications call for junk food. And lots of it.

Friday began with more blaring childrens music promptly at 8:15am as usual.  A little after 8:30am, Madelyn and I have to go sweep up nothing.  Its more for appearances sake so we can greet the children as they get off the bus.  At 9 we clock in and begin our day.  First up on our schedule was assisting with Kumon which is specialized lessons per kid in English, math, or Japanese.  It's crazy to see what those kids can do!  A 5 year old can add 72 + 13 etc.  And they're reading and pronouncing English at 3 years old.  Ah I was so impressed.  Anyways, we corrected their worksheet for an hour an a half and that was that.
Next, our tast was to teach the nursery kids (2 years and under) a song, but we didn't know how long our lesson had to be.  So we did the Itsy Bitsy Spider which on the CD we were given is the Eensy Weensy Spider so that was weird.  We thought we did well but then misinterpretted the main teachers motion to move to the next activity she had planned, and instead we pulled out a Teddy Bear book, read it, and taught the song that goes with it.  Following our long lesson we went and played with the nursery kids.


Madelyn making up a story to go
with the pictures in a Japanese book.



This picture doesn't do justice
to how cute this little girl
really is.  SO STINKIN' CUTE!

After nursery was lunch with no break in the day yet.  Sigh.  Long day.

Oops, caught this cutie with a mouth
full of "gohan" or rice.  This picture
was really taken to show the adorable
lunch set up some kids bring!

This girl loves me and today I finally
figured out her name (I think?) so I
took a picture to celebrate!
Everybody, meet "Mo-chan".

This adorable kid sat on my lap,
talking at me all through lunch.
That's his smile face.

More pictures! He loves the camera :)
I tried to read his name tag with my little
experience with Hiragana but all I could
get is: No-u-?-?-i-to chan.

 

Me trying to look Asian and failing.
(Photo credit: No-u-?-?-i-to chan)


After lunch was back to assisting Kumon for an hour and a half, followed by our own Kumon class.  The class today began awful with a gentle reprimand and a lot of corrections to how we teach and plan lessons.  It was so frustrating because it's SO hard to understand anybody.  I don't know what they expect and even when I think I know what Majelyn wants, when I go to teach the teachers always seem to be signalling something else.  Majelyn told us the break down of how she wants the lessons to go now, so hopefully we'll be better.  I just wish she had told those expectations BEFORE we taught.  Sigh.  Anyways, in our Kumon class we are learning Hiragana which are the symbols that phonetically spell out Japanese words.  In Kids Club today, there was a Japanese tranlastion of a book about the town making a giant jam sandwhich to trap a large swarm of bees.  Remember that book, family? Well I did and I wanted so badly to read it but it was all in Katakana which is like Hiragana except for Englsih words.
After school, Minako took us to the gorcery store to buy laundry soap and Madelyn and I also stocked up on some good ol', much needed Japanese junk food!
We made chicken and rice for dinner and finished Aladin.  Overall, a good evening to make up for a long exhausting day!