Beanstalk School Life – Page 51 – Daily Life at Beanstalk International School

2009 Christmas Party

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!!!

2009 Sports day

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.

Protected: Halloween Parade 2009 video

Halloween 2009

On Friday October 30th, Beanstalk International School held our third annual Halloween Parade!
This is an event that everybody looks forward to all year and the fun we have and the funny costumes (and not to mention the trick or treat candy) becomes something that the students and parents love to talk about for a long time.

Above you can see the Missy Mouse class and the Robby Rabbit class is pictured below. Everybody looked so cute in their outfits, and even some of the parents came in costume, which created a great atmosphere.

Each class spent a lot of time practicing songs and dances for a Halloween performance in front of all the parents and their hard work certainly showed. The mothers and fathers as well as the teachers were all surprised at how well everybody remembered the words and the dance moves. Great work everybody!!

Along the Halloween parade route, we stopped by Kotobukiso, a local senior citizens home, like we do each year, and put on a Halloween performance for the friendly residents.
They really seemed to be excited to see us and really got into the dances and songs.

At the end of the show we presented them with a craft project that all the students worked on for weeks, which is pictured below. Each student made their own leaf which we then put on the tree, and there are also twigs and nuts that we collected from the park and placed at the base of the tree as well as interspersed throughout the leaves.

Happy Halloween to everybody and we look forward to seeing what fantastic costumes everybody has in store for next year.

Otsukimi Party

It’s that time of year again when the moon is at it’s most beautiful, and we commemorate the occasion by making ‘Otsukimi dango’, or Moon viewing dumplings.

Above: Robby Rabbit class poses in front of their delicious creations.

After washing our hands, the first thing we did was pour some water and mix it in with the dry ingredients. We all had a turn at mixing and kneading the dough until we had a good consistency.

After that we rolled them up into little balls, (well,some of them ended up all balls 🙂 ) and boiled them. After they cooled down we rolled them in kinako (soybean flour) and placed some anko bean paste on top.

When they were all ready we placed them with some flowers that are traditionally set out for Tsukimi, and proudly posed in front of our new creations. It was soon snack time though and we all enjoyed eating the fruits of our labor.

Missy Mouse class did a great job rolling the dangos into shape.

Deedee class posing with their Otsukimi dango

Beanstalk welcomes new teachers

2009 second semester started on Tuesday September 2nd and it was good to see all of our friends back from summer vacation. We also welcomed two new teachers from the U.S.A, Miss Ebony and Mr. Greg.

Hi. My name is Miss Ebony. I’m from Los Angeles, California in the U.S.A.
I like singing, dancing, sewing and reading. I enjoy going to concerts and art museums. I look forward to getting to know all the Beanstalk students and parents.

Hello everyone! My name is Mr. Greg. I’m originally from South Carolina in the U.S, and I just moved to Nagoya from Kyoto. I’m really looking forward to getting to know all of the great kids in our Robby Rabbit class.
If you have any questions or thoughts, please feel free to contact me. Thanks.

Summer School 2009 report

Apart from swimming in the pool we are having many fun and new experiences during summer school this year.
Fun in the pool at summer school

Everybody loves ice cream especially in the summertime, and we decided to make our own ice cream blocks at summer school this year. A perfect relief in the hot Nagoya summer is a home made fresh fruit ice cream block.

We cut up lot of various fruit including bananas, oranges, grapefruits, pineapples and apples. Then we threw them all in the blender to get a nice and smooth consistency, and when that was done we poured them into ice block molds and froze them overnight.

The proof was in the pudding because the next day when we ate them outside in the garden, they were delicious!

Yummy! homemade fruit icecream

Expanding on our tradition of introducing students to new, exciting and enriching experiences such as shuji, music classes and gym instruction, we had a very special guest come to Beanstalk to meet with everybody.
Karate master Hiromitsu Shibata, 2 assistants and a number of his students came to give our students a demonstration and also their first lesson in karate.

Karate lessons at summer school

The large number of people and the loud shouting of the instructors was a little daunting at first but the children really got into it. They were punching and kicking and shouting and it looked like a lot of fun.

It isn’t all fun and games-(ok, it is all fun 😉 ) We also have academic themes and this year’s summer school themes are recycling and maths.

summer school studying

Summer School in Nagoya at Beanstalk is a lot of fun, and we still have 2 more weeks to go. We can’t wait to see what happens next. We certainly hope the weather clears up so we can get more pooltime!

Tanabata Festival 2009

Tuesday July 7th was Tanabata. The story of Tanabata come from an old Japanese fairy tale about the god of the sky, Tenkou and his daughter Orihime.

Orihime wove clothes for the gods all day everyday on a special machine called a Tanahata. It is believed that the word Tanabata came from the name of this weaving machine.

Tenkou was worried because his daughter did nothing but weave clothes all day every day. He decided that it would be a good idea if he introduced her to a man, and decided on a young man named Hikoboshi. He was a hardworking caretaker of cows who lived on the other side of the Amanogawa river. Amanogawa is “Milky Way” in English.

When Orihime and Hikoboshi met, they fell in love at first sight and spent all of their time together. They spent so much time together in fact, that they totally neglected their respective duties and as a result the cows became sick and the gods’ clothes became old and worn out.

This made everybody including Tenkou, the god of the sky and Orihime’s father quite mad and he forbade them from meeting each other anymore. Tenkou took his daughter back to the other side of the river and put her to work, but the two lovers were so distraught at being forced apart that they could not work at all. They could do little but stare across the Amanogawa river with a deep sense of longing.

Seeing his daughter so sad distressed Tenkou so he decided to allow Orihime and Hikoboshi to meet, but only one day a year, on July 7th, and only if they worked hard throughout the year. Knowing this, they worked as hard as before so they could meet on that one day each year.

Traditionally, people would wish for clear skies on on July 7th so that the two could meet over the Milky Way. If it rained on that day, the water level in the river would rise too high and the couple would not be able to meet because they could not cross.

People wished this by writing the wish on a piece of paper called a Tanzaku and hanging it on the branches of a bamboo tree. Nowadays people write their own wishes on the paper.

At Beanstalk the children wrote their own wishes in English and hung them on a big bamboo tree in the gym. Everybody wore their yukatas including the teachers, and some of the boys wore jinbeis. Everybody looked really nice all dressed up in their traditional garb.

If you look closely below you can see “tanabata matsuri” written in calligraphy on yellow paper on the wall behind the students. Believe it or not, the Deedee Deer students wrote those themselves during their shuji classes every week.

After arriving and getting changed into our yukatas, we all sat down and wrote out our wishes on the tanzaku. After that we moved to the gym and performed the songs that we had been practicing for a few weeks. First, Missy Mouse and Deedee Deer class sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Then Robby Rabbit class sung Mr. Sun, which is a song that was new to all the parents so it was a lovely surprise. After that, Deedee class sang It’s a Small World and then all the students joined in and sang the Tanabata song together.

Deedee Deer class visits Morikoro Park

Last week the Deedee Deer students took a field trip to Morikoro park, an ecological themed park at the site of the Aichi Expo held in 2005.

One of the activities that we enjoyed was cutting through bamboo trees to make a telescope. It certainly looked easier than it was, but everybody tried really hard and eventually were able to cut through.

Inside there were plenty of things to do from watching a robot show to investigating all the nooks and crannies of the multi-level discovery area. After a picnic lunch we rode the giant Ferris Wheel which took 15 minutes and we had fantastic views of all of Nagoya. Unfortunately it wasn’t such a clear day so we couldn’t see all the way back to our school, but we still were able to see a lots of cool things.

Everyone was well behaved and we rode the Linimo, Japan’s first maglev train service on the way home. Everybody had a great time and we are looking forward to going somewhere again soon.

Our trip to the zoo

On Thursday May 14th all three classes went on a field trip to Higashiyama Zoo. Some of the mothers from our Robby Rabbit class were kind enough to volunteer their time and come along and assist the teachers in looking after our middle class. We would like to extend a big Thank You to the mothers who came along and helped us.

Deedee Deer, our oldest class left their parents at home and found their way around the zoo all by themselves with Mr. Ricky. While looking at the seals and talking to their teacher in English, some children form another school were amazed to see Japanese children conversing all in English and asked them about it in Japanese. It was funny to watch the Deedee Deer students react to being spoken to in Japanese, they were unsure if they were allowed to speak in Japanese, as they speak English all day at Beanstalk International School 🙂

Our youngest class, Missy Mouse class came with their parents and as it was their outing they were very excited.

Everybody had a great time and we were all very tired at the end of the day. We are sure that all the students, and some of the mothers and teachers too, slept very well that night.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Dec
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31