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!

 

With this month being December, naturally we decided our lessons should be about the number one holiday celebrated around the globe… Christmas!!!

 

This month at Sunrise has been filled with Christmas cheer, songs and most important of all, kindness to one another! This month, our students have practiced numerous Christmas songs such as “Deck the Halls”, “Santa Clause Is Coming To Town”, “Winter Wonderland” and “Little Snowflake”, to name just a few. We have studied ornaments, presents, reindeer, snowmen, elves, and of course, Santa Clause. We decorated our school with Christmas stockings, snowmen and had our students decorate their own Christmas trees which they displayed proudly to their parents.

 

To help our upcoming Christmas Party feel even more festive, our students created their own hats to wear during the event. Our Little Caterpillars created tiny snowmen to wear as hats, while the Hungry Caterpillars made hats that looked like reindeer. The Shiny Butterflies decided to create amazing Santa Clause hats, while the Flutter Butterflies went all out and sewed their own green Elf hats, complete with bells. Everyone’s hats looked amazing, and the Christmas cheer could be felt all throughout the Christmas Party.

 

The Party itself was loads of fun as well! Each class performed a rendition of their favorite Christmas songs, with some classes doing amazing dances while other’s showed off their ability to play musical instruments. Afterwards, our students were divided into four separate teams and we all played an amazing game of “Flip-the-Cards”. Everyone tried their best, and we saw some amazing teamwork between our students. It was a very fun game!

 

For our Grand Finale, all the students were seated while listening to our teachers read Christmas stories, unaware that a special guest has arrived. Who is our special guest, you ask? None other, that the amazing Santa Clause, of course! He’d made a special trip, all the way from the North Pole, to visit all the good children here at Sunrise Kids. He was even kind enough to bring presents for all the children (and our teachers). The excitement and Christmas cheer was amazing, and all of the students were very excited to meet Santa Clause. We are so glad to see that our students had such a fun time this year, and we look forward to even more amazing days in the future! Merry Christmas everyone!

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Birds of a feather, flock together!

Our students are working so hard!

Don’t forget the beard!

So many cute Santa Clauses!

Painting is always so much fun!

Behold! Our Christmas Trees!

Learning to sew is a good skill!

Can’t you see, I’m busy?

Some of our silly little “elves”

ALOT of our silly little (and some big) elves!

Learning to share is a great thing.

All work and no play….

So silly!

We are amazing!

You know you want to wear them, too!

Showing off our hats.

Our might Reindeer class!

The elves are ready for the party!

The Santas are ready for the party as well!

This must be an exciting story!

Are you having fun? YES!

Preparing to show our skills with pianica.

We are ready to sing “Winter Wonderland”.

Do you know “Deck the Halls”?

We cant sing without my hat!

Making sure we have our snowmen hats on for the perfomance.

Red team is ready to play “Flip the Cards”!

Pink team is ready to win at “Flip the Cards”!

Orange team is ready to crush their rivals, the pink team!

Red vs Blue in “Flip the Cards”.

Blue team won the round!

Time for Round 2!

A pretty close match between the Pink team and Orange team.

They are loving the story so much, they didn’t notice who walked in.

It’s Santa Clause!!

He came to see us!

Santa’s reindeer looks familiar…

Questions for Santa!

I have a question too!

He brought us presents!

So much joy in that smile!

I see two Santas!

They could be twins.

Matching outfits.

Thank you for the presents!

Santa and a little reindeer.

Make that TWO reindeers.

I’m so happy!

Thank You Santa Clause!

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We hope everyone had an amazing Christmas, and we hope you all have an even more amazing New Year! A special thanks to Santa Clause for coming to visit us, and even more special thanks to our students, who practiced so hard, for the Christmas Party’s Musical Performance. You all did amazingly well!

Everyone at Sunrise wishes you a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Be sure to stay warm, and we look forward to seeing everyone next year!

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…………?

Hello everyone! Welcome to our special lesson blog! In February, we will have our performance day and it is fast approaching so all the kids have been hard at work, practicing to deliver the best show ever!

The Shiny Butterflies have been working on a dance with batons!

The Fluttery Butterflies have been practicing a dance to go with a popular song called, “Better When I’m Dancing.”

And the Caterpillars have a special, Disney Dance for the Mickey March!

We don’t want to give everything away as it won’t be much of a surprise, but you can look forward to all the dancing and singing in a few more weeks!

Here are the Flutteries working on a few of the props for their performance.

Here are the Caterpillars working on a prop for their production! We won’t tell you what it is, but it’s bright and opens up our Caterpillars’ play!

As fun as the practicing has been, we’d all be pretty tired if that’s all we did. So to break up the weeks, the Caterpillars have been learning about opposites (big and small, fast and slow) while playing games and the Butterflies learned all about different states of matter; solid, liquid and gas.

So here are the Caterpillars playing an “opposites memory game” where each friend had one card and their opposite was hidden. They had to guess which card had their opposite, when they did, they won!

Here are the Butterflies learning that, when cold “solid” ice becomes warm, it melts and turns to “liquid” water. We couldn’t heat the water, but they learned that it will be a gas when pushed to 100 degrees!

So there you have it, guys! We have had a very busy month, but it will be even more special when our team shows their skills in the performance day!