An All-English Preschool in Yokohama.
English classes for 2 years old to elementary school age.

Hello and welcome to this month’s special lesson!

Well, being October, there’s only one thing that the lesson could be about – Halloween! This month at Sunrise has been a fun-filled affair with a healthy dash of spookiness thrown in for good measure! Everyone at the school has had a huge amount of fun making ghosts, vampires, jack-o-lanterns, skeletons and zombies. We’ve decorated the school in all manner of creatures and had a brilliant time singing and performing a whole host of Halloween songs. We’ve also talked about what some of our favourite monsters are and learned about some spooky locations too. The Fluttery Butterflies have had a great time writing their own spooky Halloween story set right here at Sunrise while the Shinies wrote a story featuring lots of creepy creatures.

The month’s work cumulated in fantastic day of Halloween events. A spooky fashion parade was followed by a brilliant time at Okano park for some very tasty trick-or-treating. We’d like to give a big shout-out to all the parents and volunteers who came along to help – you made the day a truly memorable one! We’d also like to thank the students for their creativity and enthusiasm. Your costumes were brilliant!

We’d like to take this opportunity to once again thank all the parents and volunteers who gave their time to make it such a special day. It was truly a wonderful event and we couldn’t have done it without your support.

But that’s all for this month! Thank you for taking the time to read our Halloween blog – we hope you enjoyed it!

Hello everyone and welcome to our monthly, special lesson introduction for September!

This month saw us hold the sports day event for the whole school at the Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium and what a spectacular event it was! We saw the fast, the strong, the athletic and cunning in this fun-filled and action-packed day of events!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here it is, the final group photo! Thank you to everyone in this photo that made this sports day the spectacular event that it was. The children who worked super hard to both be ready for their events and for making the flags you see in the background as well as the entrance and exit pillars. Also the parents who both competed, cheered for their children and volunteered to help arrange the events. The teachers for arranging and helping the children get ready. But also a thank you for the staff at the gymnasium who were very accommodating.

 

So thank you all once again and we hope you had as much fun as we did!

It’s summer time which means two things. Firstly, it’s time to head to the beach, eat some shaved ice, and have lots of fun! But secondly, as just as importantly, summer time means cleaning time. So before Sunrise closed for the summer holidays, all the students and staff worked together to make Sunrise sparkle! Everyone, from the smallest caterpillar to the biggest butterfly, worked hard to clean and improve their classrooms and play areas! It was lots of fun and everyone did a grand job!

Cleaning the top and bottom of our chairs!

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning!

All the caterpillars worked very hard!

Cute cleaning!

Our Fluttery Butterflies cleaned well too!

Cleaning all our toys!

Cleaning the walls.

Cleaning the rails.

Racing across the floor!

Making our toys sparkle!

Pulling tape off the floor.

Having fun while cleaning!

Cleaning the windows!

Having fun while the cleaning!

 

We all had a brilliant time cleaning our school. It was a wonderful team effort from everyone and the results really showed. We hope you all had a wonderful, peaceful and safe summer break!

During the month of June we have been focusing on learning about our family members and especially about the head of the family – our fathers!  We talked about and discovered the things that our fathers do for us, learned how to tie a Windsor knot and constructed a wonderful father’s day present. We’ve worked hard and transformed some regular milk cartons into a beautiful photo and pen stand which we decorated using lots of creativity. We hope that all the Sunrise Kids Dad’s had a very happy father’s day and we hope they enjoyed their presents as much as we enjoyed making them!

Learning how to tie a Windsor knot!

With our finished ties! Just like Daddy!

Having fun pretending to be our Dad’s

Turning our milk cartons into presents.

Having fun making a present for Dad!

Almost done!

With the finished products!

We had a wonderful time learning about our father’s, tying Windsor knots and making a very special present for our fathers who mean so much to us. We thank all the Dad’s out there for all the hard work they do for us – you’re all very special indeed!

Spring is passing by like leaves in the wind and summer is almost upon us. So here at Sunrise, we decided that this would be the perfect time to plant some seeds and grow our own crops!

 

Here are some eager kids waiting to plant some seeds!

But first we have to decorate our plant pots!

Look how colourful the plant pots are!

Then we filled our pots with some soil.

Popped in some seeds.

Gave the soil a sprinkling of fertiliser.

And finished with some water.

There were so many seeds planted!

Using trowels to put soil into a big plant pot.

Then we got grubby fingers when we put the seeds in!

 

All in all, it was a fun-filled month with everyone planting their own seeds!

Please take a look on the front terrace to see how your plants are growing. And don’t forget to water them every morning with two watering cans of water.

Thank you very much everyone and happy growing!

Hello there and welcome to our special lesson blog. This month has seen us do many things, but it was learning about Boys’ Day and making carp streamers which stole the show!

Here are the Fluttery Butterflies having an outside lesson to start their carp streamer craft.

They drew various shapes and pictures onto paper using coloured pens…

Dipped them into water…

Then hanged them out to dry, ready for the next step!

Decorating their carp.

Putting it all together and…

Completing their carp streamers!

The Catterpillars used a fun painting technique with some jelly cups.

They also stuck on the carp’s eye.

And this was the result! An absolutely marvelous, Koinobori display.

The Shiny Butterflies drew some great crests.

Many different colours and shapes for their family crests.

They then chose the streamer colours for their “fukinagashi.”

Then painted their crests (the pictures were crayon so the paint dispersed and didn’t cover them!

When it had all been put together…

…A beautiful Carp streamer had been made!

 

So there you have it, everyone! Thank you so much for joining us and we hope you had fun seeing how we made our incredible, Koinobori carp streamers!

 

It was a very emotional month here at Sunrise both with the Graduation ceremony, sending our Fluttery Butterflies off to elementary school, witnessing the end of a long stay by one of our long term student and Mr. Anand also leaving Sunrise Yokohama to join the Sunrise school in Tokyo. But that doesn’t mean it has to be a sad day, it was a joyous occasion seeing many new starts for many familiar faces.

This is one of our students being given a farewell sendoff by all of his friends.

Here’s one of our Fluttery Butterflies receiving their Graduation Certificate.

The Flutteries singing with their B.I.G, big and beautiful voices!

They each, also gave a fantastic speech, telling the story of their lives at Sunrise!

The Caterpillars and Shiny Butterflies singing a beautiful, goodbye song for the Fluttery Butterflies.

The Fluttery Butterflies were then presented with a gift from their younger class members.

The teachers were then given a big surprise when the parents presented a gift to them! A wonderful photo album and collage!

We were then given a beautiful show from the Fluttery Butterflies when they sang the song “Farewell My Beloved Kindergarten.”

Then we ALL sang our Sunrise song!

We took funny photos…

And beautiful photos…

Then lovely Graduates photos.

 

So there it is, ladies and gentleman. Our Graduation was a success and we are all so proud of how far the Graduates have come since starting here at Sunrise.

 

Hello everyone!  Did you have a Happy Valentine’s Day?  We certainly did here at Sunrise!  We have been practicing hard for the big Dance and Drama Fest, but Valentine’s Day gave us the perfect opportunity to give the kids a little break…and have fun at the same time!  In fact, this is one of our favourite lessons of the year!

So what did we do?  Let me give you a hint…

Not enough?  Here’s another 

Looks like Mr. Steven is dipping some chocolates!!  That’s right, we made some chocolates with out Sunrise Kids!  The kids watched patiently as we portioned out the  chocolate.

And then the dipping began!

The older kids were a little more patient and were able to line up and pick the treats they wanted.

Some of their creations looked pretty yummy!

And of course, heart-shaped Genji pies were perfect for the occasion!

One hope they are going to give some of those chocolates away!

Of course…it would be cruel to make all that yummy stuff without letting them eat a little!

Thankfully, the kids love chocolate, but not THAT much…..

Can we make chocolates for White Day…………?

So here at Sunrise, we like to embrace as many, foreign holidays as possible in order to give our students a taste of all the different activities that English speaking countries like to indulge in. For this month, our main focus was the American holiday, Thanksgiving Day.

Both the Caterpillars (2/3yo) an Butterflies (4/5yo) made lots of different Thanksgiving foods in preparation for our big Thanksgiving dinner!

Here’s the Caterpillars making some yummy-looking, bread rolls!

They looked so good that some wanted to eat them!

Here’s the Butterflies making some delicious, turkey legs!

They too, look absolutely scrumptious!

Both the Caterpillars and Butterflies, also made Thanksgiving hats, to wear at the Thanksgiving dinner!

Here’s the Caterpillars painting their turkey bowls.

Then after a day of drying, we put a beak, snood, comb, eyes, feet and leafy feathers on to make it look like a turkey!

The Butterfly boys made some Pilgrim top hats…

The butterfly girls made some Pilgrim bonnets…

We then all wore our hats for some Turkey Bowling…

Some Pin the Feathers on the Turkey…

And for our HUGE Thanksgiving Day dinner!

As you can see, we used all the food that our kids prepared and on the day, we even let the Butterflies have a go at setting the tables with plates, cups and cutlery then the Caterpillars were brave enough to serve all of our food!

Then to top it all off, we were gifted with some stuffing which we let the kids try. It’s so yummy!

We hope you enjoyed our super fun, delicious looking dinner and we look forward to our next special lesson. What could it be…? You’ll find out soon! Thank you everyone!

 

Mr. Steven.

Hello everyone!  I hope you guys are keeping cool in the summer, because we have certainly had some hot days…we have plenty of ways to keep cool.  Sometimes we splash in the pool…

But every so often we like to do something special….we have tons of fun making shaved ice!  The kids get excited every year when we bring out the shaved ice machine.  But before we do that, we always practice serving each other with a few role-plays.  First we had a little barbecue…

And using the same kind of format, practiced with “shaved ice” made out of tissue…

And finally we had the big day!  Naturally, when it comes to making something to eat, washing hands comes first.

From there we had some kids help serve the others…some handed out plates…

Another served the ice (with a little help…)

Another friend poured the syrup…

And we can’t forget the best part…the eating!

A day of shaved ice brings lots of smiles…

and colorful tongues!

Needless to say, it is one of my favorite days as a teacher too!  I hope that you guys have found a good way to keep cool, but I have a feeling we have found the best

Until next time!

Mr. Anand

Sunrise Kids International School