Back to my favourite elementary school!

So it seems that I actually do get to go to one of my elelmentary schools more than once this year! I've just had my second and third days of classes there, and four of these classes were even with students I had taught before! So far all the other elementary schools I've visited have only played host to me once.

These pictures are of the san-nensei (grade 3) students who were so hyper! I played with them during the lunch break, and I had about twenty kids circling around grabbing my hands, sweater and hair. I could barely walk there were so many of them. Most of the younger kids don't quite understand that I can't speak or understand Japanese very well, and since elementary school kids don't usually have any regular English classes, they'll just keep talking to me in Japanese, hoping that if they keep repeating themselves I'll undertand. Played a game similar to "duck-duck-goose", then a game similar to "What time is it Mr. Wolf?" at lunchtime with about 40 or 50 of the kids and one of the teachers.




These are the kids in their lunch-getting outfits. They wear these at the junior highs at lunchtime too, where they also eat a school lunch, but I didn't see any at the senior high I visit. They put on their little masks and hats and a group of them go to retrieve the large buckets and bowls of the meal and carry them back to the classroom, where the things are set up on desks at the front of the room and then the lunch group kids serve out the lunch into the bowls of their classmates. The principle of the hats, masks, and coats is good, but the masks often slip off the nose and sometimes the mouth too...


All October I have been trying to do at least a few Halloween activities in each lesson to spread the joy that is the Halloween season :)

Here another class of san-nensei are colouring pumpkins. Some were very creative, one was purple, and another had a mouth full of tiny jagged teeth.






The class with their pumpkin pictures.



Here are some pictures from another elementary school:
The kids outside raking the school garden (only they're all such camera-hogs here that as soon as they see a camera they make a big fuss to pose with their peace-signs).


The entrance-way to one of the buildings, where outside shoes must be swapped for slippers or indoor schoes.



Cleaning-time! Every day students of all levels have cleaning time, in which they are assigned a different part of the school to clean. Needless to say, the schools are typically quite dusty since this is the only cleaning attention they ever get...6th graders are not the most efficient cleaners..