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

Hello everyone, this is Ms. Kari with my last blog. Today I will be going to talk about graduation. Today was our second graduation ceremony at Sunrise Kids for the Fluttery Butterfly class. There were lots of tears but also lots of smiles as well. The Flutteries worked really hard during this path month rehearsing and memorizing lots of things for the ceremony.

They learned how to enter nicely.

How to receive certificates properly.

How to recite their speech and play.

And also how to sing for their farewell song.

The Caterpillar and Shiny classes also had lots of things prepared for the Flutteries including a song…

Flowers…

and a flower road…

The ceremony was filled with lots of flowers especially Sakura, the popular symbol for graduations in Japan.

It was a very nice combination of Japanese and Western traditions for graduation. There were even lots of surprises from our parents and kids with lots of presents.

I will never forget this past year with the Flutteries. May you all find much success on your new journey.

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!!

It’s 2016! What better way to celebrate the New Year than with fireworks. Fireworks, originally made in China, are now a way for people all around the world to join in the festivities for the new year. The first use of fireworks were in China in the 7th Century. They were used to scare away evil spirits. The invention of fireworks was probably an accident when black powder was thrown into fire. The chemical reactions from certain powders produce colors and resembled flowers. This is why in Japanese and Chinese the English translation is ‘fire flower’. Because of the beauty of fireworks, this culture from China has spread across the world. Especially in America, we are quite fond of using fireworks to celebrate. In fact the first use of fireworks in the United States were on July 4th, 1777. To this day we continue to use fireworks to celebrate Independence Day. Americans began using fireworks to celebrate New Years was brought by the first immigrants of China. In today’s modern age, we have shared many cultures within America and fireworks during New Year’s Eve and Day is a favorite of Americans. Even in school, we always have some kind of interesting craft to make during this time whether it’s using straws to blow paint to look like fireworks or making your own cracker to use to ring in the new year.

For this craft we made a pop up card. A pop up card is basically a card in which you open that pops up at you. For this we used paint, construction paper, crayons and a fork!

Let’s see how the kids did!

 

The kids really enjoyed painting with such a strange tool. They are used to painting with paintbrushes, but it was great for them to learn that you can use just about any medium to make art! I hope you try this at home as well. Not only forks but with all kinds of materials! Let’s be creative!

Sunrise Culture – Celebrating Christmas, the Western way!

 

As Sunrise is indeed an International school, we feel it best to not only celebrate holidays from around the world, but also to incorporate these traditions into our lesson plans. As Christmas is one of the most popular, well known, and widely celebrated holidays in the world; we enjoy teaching the children not only about how we can celebrate this holiday, but also about its history and origins.

One of the most recognizable symbols of Christmas is of course the Christmas tree. All of our classes had an opportunity to experience setting up and decorating our two Sunrise Christmas trees, learning about their meanings and about the ornaments, tinsel, and star.

 

 

Tinsel garland is draped across the tree in order to replicate the appearance of freshly fallen snow!

 

 

Our two completed Christmas trees along with the Butterfly class and its teachers!

 

 

Once the children have learned about Santa Claus and his origins through class lessons, we introduced another time tested tradition that is the writing of a letter to Santa Claus. Here we can see one of our students practicing their writing skills while also writing the very own message to Santa!

 

 

A normal letter might be lacking in pizzazz we decided to make our letters extra special with handmade decorations and adornments!

 

 

Similarly to most schools in the West, no Christmas celebration would be complete without having a Christmas Party. Here we can see our Little Caterpillar class decorating Christmas tree cards for our Red vs. Green “Flip-the-Card” game!

 

 

One of our methods of teaching includes the use of song and presentation, our classes had the opportunity to make festive hats, learn traditional Christmas holiday songs, and then present them to their fellow classmates! Here we can see the Caterpillar class singing “Little Snowflake” to the Butterfly class.

 

 

While the Butterfly class was able to sing a medley of “Winter Wonderland” & “Let It Snow”, along with “Happy Christmas” to the Caterpillar class.

 

 

Of course, no Christmas party would be the same without a visit from Santa Claus himself, bringing cheer and presents for all the good Sunrise boys and girls. Merry Christmas everyone!

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!