HJIS Sendai Aoba Class Blogs 2025-26: Week 41

Hello, Orca Class families!

Morning & Afternoon Meeting

Our morning meetings this week were truly engaging and meaningful! 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 the afternoon, we continued our Term 3 Show and Tell this week about their favorite things to show our differences. It was wonderful that our friends' brought different things like stitch, lion stuff toy, and other toys from Blue group. It was engaging and meaningful as we tried to guess what our friends brought/showed. Our friends were so curious and guessed a lot like why they chose it or asking about its shape and size. We would like to extend our utmost gratitude to our parents for supporting their children in this activity. From handmade crafts, unique things such as kaleidoscope and ammonite fossils to fun and adorable things and photos that they had shared throughout the school year for our Show and Tell, thank you so much. It made each day for them as they showcased their photos and things to heir friends. Truly, we have achieved our goals of introducing themselves through their names, age and birthday, boosting their confidence and making them express their thoughts and ideas confidently.

This Monday too, we had our Morning Assembly in the Big room where we talked about a new character trait "Caring". One of the activities they did was upper-grades friends were helping lower-grades friends put the red stickers to decorate the heart. It was such a wonderful time to witness how our older friends care for our younger ones at school! We ended our day through reading a storybook and singing a goodbye song.

Language & Literacy

Pre-K

For this week, we talked about our Raz-Kids book entitled, "Abby and Zots" and did a comprehension worksheet related with Raz-Kids. We described the pictures and read aloud the words with everyone. Then, we reviewed reading word families through to practice blending and sounding out the words, did a phonics worksheet, "Read and Race" game and our CVC booklets to hone reading fluency and spelling.

Kinder

For this week, we talked about our Raz-Kids book entitled, "When I Grow Up" and did a related worksheet related with Raz-Kids. We described the pictures and read aloud the words with everyone. Then, we reviewed on consonant blends through a worksheet, did a "Write a Sentence paired game", graduation craft and our CVC booklets as a form of review. Last, we used this time to practice for our graduation rehearsal too. They were all doing so well in the practice especially walking confidently on our graduation rainbow walk!

Maths

Pre-K

For Week 41, the Pre-K students continued to learn about addition and subtraction by playing a collaborative games, making crafts, and completing booklets that pushed their limits and allowed them to grow more comfortable and familiar working with numbers past 10. One of the games we played saw us solve as many problems as possible within a set time limit. We also played a board game in which we had to solve problems in order to progress. We were so motivated to break our previous high scores and complete many challenges.

Kinder

For Week 41, we introduced the concept of multiplication with learning a few helpful strategies that directly correlated with our previous additional and subtraction studies. These strategies included repeated addition, equal grouping, and using arrays to break down any multiplication problem we came across. We also conducted many collaborative games in which we raced together as a class to solve the most multiplication problems we could within a set time limit. We then used the thrill and momentum of breaking our personal records of the game to transition into completing coloring activities (in which we had to solve multiplication problems in order to match the answers to a specific color), crafts, and booklets.

Topic Exploration

For Topic Exploration we studied the importance of stories and the roles they play in molding pop culture and representing cultural values. We learned about the themes of My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo, Peter Pan, The Lion King, and The Iron Giant and how those story represent the importance of preserving and respecting nature, maintaining personal relationships, alongside maintaining courage in the face of adversity. We made many crafts upon watching short clips from the movies/stories we covered that showed us these themes play out within their stories.

Free Play and Japanese Lesson

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.