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

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!

 

Hello everyone! This month, we’ve been learning all about keeping our home, bodies and even our planet clean! By washing our bodies and cleaning our homes, we can keep the planet clean for future generations. But simply wiping the floor or washing our hair, won’t help too much. We need to recycle all manner of things such as, paper, aluminium and plastic.

So first, we need to know how and why we need to clean the planet. For this, we need to know about the other environments of the world.

The ocean is the biggest and the most in danger as so much oil and pollutants are dumped there.

But there are many other places  in which too many pollutants are carelessly thrown aside without a second thought for the nature and animals that inhabit it.

This is a pollution box, showing the effects of oil and other substances that boats drop into the ocean.

Here we are recycling some old paper and a bicycle using the paper box and aluminium box.

By teaching to recycle, we can help kids understand the dangers our whole world faces and how to prevent pollution.

The Butterflies then actually used some old, unneeded paper, to make some new paper!

The Caterpillars took their cleaning skills into the home and learned all about germs! Tiny bacteria that, if breathed or eaten or simply touched, can make you sick and makes the room really dirty. So we learned that one must wash their hands, periodically, throughout the day (especially when they LOOK dirty) to remove all the bad germs.

We did this by simulating the fact that germs are EVERYWHERE and by touching things, sneezing, coughing and even just moving, the germs will spread and could cause one to get sick!

On the tables!

In our hands and on our chairs!

But if we wash our hands, we can at least make them clean!

So after the germs covered our hands, we practiced washing our hands in a toy sink (so we didn’t put tape and paper in the real one) then went to the bathroom to put that practice into action!

Other than germs on our hands and in our house, we learned that there are so many germs in your mouth! To remove those germs, we need to brush our teeth at least two times, every day! So that means we need to learn proper technique to keep our mouths, clean.

We used a laminated mouth and make-shift toothbrush to practice brushing up and down…

Left and right….

And round and round!

When we realise just how dirty everything really is, we can make a change and have the cleanest planet, possible.

Thank you for joining us, this month.

Until next time, stay clean!

Hello everyone, At Sunrise we always try and include a little science in our lessons.  This month’s theme is “Under the Sea”, so it was a no-brainer that we would learn about the science of water!   There are a lot of different ways we can experiment with water, but we tried a few new things this year.

The Caterpillars tried to use water to make some art.  

Water is always great for making art, but we can do some great stuff if we add soap!  We mixed a little bubble soap with paint and water…and started making bubbles!

The kids we surprised to see the different marks bubbles can make on water.  They kept going and going…

Dip, dip, dip,

blow,blow,blow

Pop, pop, pop…

And..voila!

Bubble art is so much fun!

The Butterflies took a little more scientific approach.  We learned all about the “skin” on water.  It has a special name…

Surface tension allows us to do all sorts of cool experiments!

The kids tried to use surface tension to float objects on the water.

Some were harder than others…

We also learned about breaking surface tension using soap.  First we sprinkled some pepper on some water…

And then we dropped some soap on it!  The kids were shocked at the results!

Finally we looked at a few interesting properties of water.  Like how it doesn’t mix with oil…

Even if you stir it up!

That is…unless you add soap!

Soap allows the water and oil to mix!  Aha!  That’s why we use soap to clean up!

Once we understand a few things about water, we can understand a lot about how the world works!

And understanding is what Sunrise is all about!

Until next time!

Hello everyone!  Did you know that in Japan we celebrate “Toki no kinenbi” every July 10th?  It’s a significant day which celebrate the 1st water clock in Japan.  Google it when you get the chance and you’ll find out a little bit out the importance of the day.  Of course, with a day devoted to time, it’s a great chance to learn about telling the time!  As a result, we learned a little bit about how to read a clock.

The Caterpillar class learned about different parts of the day

What do we do in the morning?  What do we do in the afternoon?

We also practiced telling the time using our “dengon” game.

We also played “What time is it Mr. Wolf?” in the park!

These are some great ways to practice time!

Of course, the best way to learn about clocks and time is to really get into it with a craft!

The Caterpillars made some sunshine clocks with their teachers.

Some even tried cutting themselves!

The older kids cut some cups…what are they making?

Does it make a little more sense now?

How about now?

We added a nice face plate (the kids drew the numbers).

Add  some hands, and look at what you have!  Some very nice and useful watches!

The kids always want to wear them and love learning about the time!

Toki no kinenbi is not exactly this biggest day of the year, but it does help us think about time, which plays a big part in everyone’s lives!

See you next month!

 

Hello everyone, the days are getting hotter and hotter, which means that we get to do one of our favorite projects at Sunrise.  It’s time for planting!  We have been having lots of fun learning about how a seed grows.

 

One of the ways we learn is through songs – one of our favorites is “Oats Peas Beans and Barley Grow”, which you can check out here

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZq3m0cZ_bk

 

We also do lots of fun crafts.  The Caterpillar class (2 and 3 y/o) made a beautiful display in our Sunflower Room with water, sunshine, soil and flowers complete with petals, stems, leaves and roots.

After plenty of hype we had our planting days just last week.  The Caterpillar class planted some morning glories and the Butterfly class (4 and 5 y/o) planted edamame beans.

 

First we explained what we were going to do (the kids were excited!)…

Then we made groups…

The Butterflies decorated their pots..

.

 

Next we scooped the soil…

After that we poked some holes in the soil…

We planted the seeds….

And then we added some water…

And there you have it!  Planting day is always lots of fun, and we were lucky enough to have great weather on both days.

 

But that is just the beginning, of course.  The real lesson is in taking care of our plants – giving them lots of water and sunshine.  If we are lucky, we are going to have a beautiful garden!

 

We have lots of other activities planned throughout the year, but that will do it for this edition of our blog!  Keep reading!

 

Mr. Anand

Hello everyone, we had a wonderful February! We learned plenty of different kinds of English, but no February is complete without a look at Valentine’s Day! There is a lot of love at Sunrise, so the kids took to Valentine’s Day immediately. It didn’t hurt that we also made lots of chocolate!

The Caterpillar class had lots of fun dipping pretzels, bread sticks and marshmallows into melted chocolate then dipping them into sprinkles! We couldn’t get them to stop! It’s a good thing we brought a lot of stuff, because even though it’s nice to give chocolates on Valentine’s Day, it’s just as fun to eat!

And of course, after some hard work, nothing beats licking some chocolatey fingers!

The Caterpillars weren’t the only ones who had fun with chocolates though! The Butterflies got right in to it with some yummy creations of their own.

Mr. Matt introduced the Shiny Butterflies to the wonderful world of s’mores. Basically, a s’more is melted chocolate and marshmallow sandwiched between two graham crackers. It’s a very popular campfire snack, but just as yummy at Valentine’s Day. It also makes a wonderful mess (and creates a lot of smiles too).

Naturally, they make a few for their friends, but nothing made them happier than getting to eat one for themselves!

As always, the Flutteries got extra artistic for their chocolates, as Ms. Kari had them shape chocolatey rice krispies into hearts.

The kids had no idea what to expect when Ms. Kari started pouring the marshmallow-y batter on to the rice krispies, but we pleasantly surprised when they realized they could mold their own chocolates!

They were even happier when they realized they could add some sprinkles and more melted chocolate!

But of course, no Valentine’s Day would be complete without a card exchange and an exchange of kind words and hugs. The Shiny Butterflies and the Caterpillars made cards for each other while the Flutteries made cards to take home after carefully writing a message.

Of course, you always have a few shy kids…

All in all, it was a fun-packed week and the kids had plenty of goodies to show for it! So from all of us at Sunrise, Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Sunrise Science – The Planets and the Stars!

 

At Sunrise we teach beyond the textbook! Our students are always interested in space, so, taking a hint from them, we learned not only the names of the planets, but we learned about different constellations too! Then we let our creativity flow and made our own planets.

 

 

First, we made sure they had a good base by learning the names of the different planets, the order in which we see them and they talked about the different characteristics of each planet as well. They loved learning about Saturn’s rings!

 

The kids then drew their favorite planet. Can you guess which one this is?

 

Then they put their planet into space and added comets, stars and spacemen!

It all adds up to a beautiful galaxy!

Our older kids also tried to learn about constellations. But of course, the best way to understand constellations is to see them with your eyes. With no actual telescope we had to improvise…so we made “telescopes”.

 

 

We made some telescopes out of rolls of paper, decorated them and then put on some blue paper. The special point is the blue paper. Constellations that you know and love were painstakingly poked out by our teachers. The kids were able to learn what constellations are and got to experience “looking” at them!

We also foster creativity at Sunrise! With all the fun we were having with planets, it was natural that kids would want to create their own. The kids decorated one half of a circle with wet paint, folded it over, and voila! A planet!