Category: Photos

Over the Christmas/New year winter break, we held 2 sessions of our first ever Winter School.

ビーンストークでは、冬休み期間に内部生のみ対象のウインタースクールを実施しました。
インターナショナルプリスクール生さんのみが参加される期間は、「日本の文化を英語で伝える」事を目標とし、年末年始の行事、風習を学びました。真の国際人となる為には、まず自分の国の事をよく知る事が大切です。しかし多くの場合大人になって外国と関わりを持つまでその大切さに気がつかない事がほとんどです。そんな事がないように、私どもでは、日本独自の文化、古来からの風習を特に大切にしております。子供達も大喜びで、お餅つきや冬至でのカボチャ金時作り、自分の名前入り凧制作などに興じていました。

We’ve just finished with this year’s special Winter School session here at Beanstalk. Our preschool students learned about Japanese New Year traditions and activities with the goal of being able to talk about Japanese culture in English. To become truly international, it is important for one to know his or her own culture well. Most people, however, don’t realize that until they grow up and have a contact other cultures. We had a number of activities during Winter School meant to help our students enrich their understanding of their own culture, like making mochi, traditional winter pumpkin treats and new year’s kites.

We pounded and pounded on the rice until it became “mochi”, which we filled with sweet bean paste and rolled in soybean flour, a delicious snack!

アフタースクール生が参加された12月終わりのセッションでは、それまでとは逆に「いろいろな国」をテーマに、毎日ひとつの国を取り上げ、特色や国旗を学びお料理をいただきました。今年はオリンピックやワールドカップなど国をあげて参加するイベントが多いので、通常よりもたくさんの国名を耳にする機会も多くなります。そんな折りに自分の知っている国があるとお子様の外国への興味がより広がるものと信じております。

In our final December sessions for after school students, we took up the theme of “Countries of the World,” learning about the unique flags and cuisines of a number of nations. There will be a number of international events this year, including the Olympics and the World Cup. We hope this will give our students the chance to hear about many new countries and serve as an opportunity to increase their interest in foreign cultures.

And of course, all classes and events were conducted in an All English Environment.


Luckily for us, these gingerbread men didn’t jump out of the oven and run away!

We also studied a lot about many different countries.

ヨガにもチャレンジ。While learning about India, we tried some yoga.

Seven green porridge

Eating rice porridge with greens on January 7th is supposed to protect against ailment in the new year. The custom of eating seven types of vegetables in soup to protect against disease and disaster goes back to ancient China; it appears that it came to Japan during the Heian Period. During the Edo Period, the shogun established the custom of eating “seven green porridge” on the seventh day of the new year, and in time this custom spread to the common people. It has long been believed in Japan that wild greens are effective against all disease, and there was even a tradition of picking and eating wild greens during the new year.

This week we had our Christmas party and first annual Christmas Concert.

The children practiced playing the drums with Mr. Uichi and Miss Misako for a long time and it certainly showed in their performance. The mothers were also surprised when the students came out in their cute new band uniforms, seen below

There were two drum groups, the Piccolo group, comprised of the younger children, and the Tam Tam group, with some of the older students.

The Piccolo group played Carmen by Bizet and Minuet in G major, while the Tam Tam group played Minuet in G major and the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky.
For the parents of the younger group, it was a great opportunity to preview the level they can expect their children to achieve next year.

After the drum concert we all got together and enjoyed singing and dancing with songs for each class, as well as songs for everybody to sing together. There were even some special performances by some of the mothers with one performance featuring a keyboard and violin!! The children were so well behaved during the performance and paid wrapped attention.

There was also a performance by all of the mothers, dancing and singing that Japanese Christmas standard, “Last Christmas” by Wham. Mr Aaron wanted to sing “White Christmas” by SPEED, but nobody agreed that this was a true Christmas standard.

Finally all the students joined in a rendition of “We wish you a merry Christmas” which featured students singing, dancing and playing the drums, triangles, castanets, tambourines and hand bells. What a show!!!

Merry Christmas everybody!!!

Monday November 23rd was Labour Thanksgiving day, a public holiday in Japan. We held our annual Sports Festival at Ueda Sports Center on this day so that all the family, including proud fathers could attend and not only watch their children compete, but participate in many of the fun games and activities we had prepared.

All the students were divided into two teams, the Orange team and the Purple team. We practiced marching for weeks and made our dramatic entrances when the music started playing.

After the opening ceremony, we did some stretching and got ready for the games.

First was the over/under ball relay race with students and parents, followed by foot races, which were very entertaining. It was very fun to see some of the students run their very first race around the track, and some of the results were surprising.

Other races included the ice cream race where the students had to balance a ball on a small cup, and the caterpillar race where students got inside a cardboard box and had to roll it to the goal while inside the box. You can imagine how difficult it is to steer a box from the outside. Some students came up with some interesting ways to maneuver the box from inside.

After all the games were finished, we had a little dance party while the points were being calculated. Many of the mothers and fathers and grandparents joined and it was a lot of fun. After all the points were added up, it was a tie with both teams having 9 points.

Final Score

Orange team: 9 points

Purple team: 9 points

Finally we had a medal ceremony where everybody received a gold medal.
Everybody had a great time and we are sure that almost everybody was in bed a lot earlier than usual that night.