HJIS Sendai Aoba Class Blogs 2025-26: Week 9

Hello, Orca Class families!

Morning & Afternoon Meeting

Our morning meetings this week were so engaging and fun! First, we talked about our 8 classroom rules to guide them throughout the day. Then, we started singing good morning song wherein we formed a circle and danced together as we say hello to everyone. It was such a joy seeing them laughing and holding each others' hands to begin our day. It was followed by checking our calendar time, assigning class jobs, doing a movement song and sharing about our whereabouts through our Class Dojo photos. In addition, we continued to practice for our performance for our upcoming Sports day. Last Thursday, we went to Izumi campus for our First Rehearsal for Sports Day.

In the afternoon, we read a storybook and had mini discussion through asking WH-questions like why, what, where, when and how in order to enhance their story comprehension and enrich their vocabulary words. This week was also our Show and Tell week. It was wonderful our friends' different objects and photos about seeds and plants from Red group. Our friends shared their favorite book, flower picture, a craft made from acorn and even a real tomato fruit! We ended our day through reading a storybook and singing a goodbye song.

Language & Literacy

Pre-K

These are the activities we did from last week to this week. To jumpstart our Literacy time , we started talking about our Raz-Kids book entitled, "My Pet Dinosaur". We described the pictures and read aloud the words with everyone. Then, we reviewed phonics Bb this week through activities like singing a song, beginning Bb and related worksheet. In addition, we did a related Raz-Kids worksheet. We aimed to enhance not only their literacy facet but also to lengthen their attention span and enhanced their focus and concentration which is essential to develop their skills and bodies holistically.

Kinder

These are the activities we did for this week. To jumpstart our Literacy time , we started talking about our Raz-Kids book entitled, "Where Plants Grow". We described the pictures and read aloud the sentences. They did a collaborative activity using a mindmap in order to show where plants grow. It was such a delight how Kinder students learn to collaborate and work harmoniously together as a group. What a great connection, Kinder! We also asked them to read one sentence per each child to enhance their confidence and reading fluency. Then, we talked about word family -ot and made a craft to enhance our understanding on word families, and did some related Raz-Kids worksheets.

Maths

Pre-K

Our Pre-K lessons for math were about capacity. We compared different kinds of containers to see which container can hold more water. We used vocabulary such as “more” and “less” to represent the comparisons and we learned about new vocabulary such as “full”, “half” and “empty” to represent how much liquid is present in a container. We did some crafts and worksheets related to these concepts.

Kinder

This week our math lessons for the Kinder grade students was about starting the topic of subtraction. It was our first time finding the difference between two numbers so we started off with a familiar concept of number bonds. We then slowly used pictures to represent the quantity of objects and subtracted by crossing off a certain number of objects to see how many are left. We also learned about applications of subtraction in daily life.

Topic Exploration

This week, our Orca class talked, "All About Plants: Seeds/Life Cycle". First, we read the book about The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle to jumpstart our topic. Then, we had activities such as making a seed life cycle, watching a time lapse of how a seed grow into a mature plant, planting seeds in our mini decorated greenhouse plastic bag to hone their understanding and skills. In addition, we made a card in celebration of Father's Day this Sunday. Lastly, we finally decorated our white shirt using fabric markers for our Sports Day costume! Everyone had so much fun choosing their own designs as they unleashed their creativity and imagination! Our next topic will be about Plants: Flowers. We can't wait to unfold and discover this topic in school through hands-on activities and explorations.

Free Play

Here are some more pictures of friends playing together in the classroom, in the Big Room, at the park, and enjoying other topics, events and activities at school. We also practiced for our Sports day event in the afternoon.