Wednesday

Woke up at 7:15am, rice for breakfast, and then drove to school. Back to a busy day today with all 6 periods filled with lessons. First up was 2-3 and we played the “pin the carrot on the snowman” game which the kids absolutely loved. I’m glad it was such a huge success with them. Some of the kids actually pinned the nose exactly on the right spot! Not sure if they were peeking, even though their homeroom teacher was covering their eyes with her hands to be extra sure, so I might have to buy a blindfold later on for the 3rd graders who’ll be playing it on Monday. We then made the Christmas cards together and they coloured in really quietly and nicely, but we didn’t quite have enough time to finish colouring in all the pictures. 2-2 was just as good, they weren’t as loud and visibly happy with the snowman game as 2-3 but that’s just their different class dynamics. They still really liked the game and asked to play it one more time. They also enjoyed making the Christmas cards and a few kids were humming along to the Christmas songs, it was very cute. There were a lot of Santa Pikachus drawn in this class. 2-3’s homeroom teacher came up to me later and said the kids really enjoyed the Olaf game, so that was really nice to hear!

2-1 in period 3 and they were actually really good today, but just slipped in their focus at the very end when we had to say the usual goodbye greetings. They just take a long time to stop what they’re doing and face the front, otherwise they’re actually a pretty well behaved class. I think they did the Olaf game the fastest though, so they had a teeny bit more time to work on their Christmas cards than the other 2 classes. 5-1 in period 4 and we finished off making their wordfinds, and then exchanged them. A lot of kids forgot to bring their wordfinds from home (since they had brought it home to finish as homework) so only a few kids could do the wordfind exchange properly. We had to give spare worksheets to the other kids to do, which they deserved for forgetting to bring the wordfind when we said specifically we would use them today. The kids that were doing the wordfinds though were really into it, and would not give up. Some of the wordfinds were written a bit messily and some had words that weren’t even in the wordfind (I think the kids forgot to write it in) so yea, it was a bit of a mess. We also tried to play a DVD for them to watch for the later half of the lesson, but then the DVD player broke with the DVD still stuck inside, so that was a complete fail!

Lunchtime with special needs kids today and it was lovely as usual. We finally found out what the last kid wants for his Christmas present, and he said he wants a drone! Me too man, I would love a drone for Christmas. Spent the lunchtime inside because I was hurriedly making alphabet cards for 5-1 to use in period 6’s lesson. Just barely managed to finish making them all by missing cleaning time, but I managed to check on the kids in the very last minute (they did great without me there) and give them their sticker rewards. 5-2 in period 5 and they were absolutely great today. It’s funny how 5-1 started out being the better, more well behaved class, but recently 5-2 has completely overtaken them to be way more well behaved and focused than 5-1. Class with 5-2 is now super easy, whereas class with 5-1 now is difficult to run. We did worksheets and started on making the wordfind, but most people finished at just the worksheets before running out of time. They were working on the worksheets so nicely, and it was lovely to be in such a quiet classroom environment for a change (English lessons are almost always noisy). 5-1 in period 6 and it was just playing alphabet karuta, but again they were just super noisy and not willing to quiet down, so we were only able to play 1.5 rounds, even though we should’ve been able to play 3. Oh well, their loss.

Got off work at 16:20 after finalizing up this Friday’s combined 1st and 6th grade special lesson with my JTE. Looking forward to see the 1st graders present their plays, and then we’re going to all play Mr. Wolf, what time is it, together! Popped by Daiso real quick after school to get some gift bags, and bumped into 3 of my students! I rarely rarely see my kids outside of school, so I was always get a little excited when I do. I didn’t see them at all until they said HEY IT’S JAIME-SENSEI. I’ve heard from other schools’ ALTs that their kids are shy and don’t openly say hi if they bump into each other outside of school, but looks like my kids live up to their reputation and aren’t shy in saying hi even outside of school. Had rice + tofu + egg + onion for dinner again, and then drove to an ALT friend’s house later around 8pm (to avoid traffic) to pick up some candy canes. She so kindly offered some to me since her mum has sent her some from America! I’ll be using them to make some Christmas bark for my teachers at school, since we all have work on the 25th. After picking up the candy canes, I dropped by the supermarket to buy the rest of the Christmas bark ingredients, and then went onsen!