English Time - Christmas

In December, English Time (what I'm going to start calling it from now) at Juhee's preschool provided me with an opportunity to tell the kids the nativity story in English - twice! :)

(The one student not sitting down is a child with autism. There is at least one in each class at Juhee's preschool and a teacher's aide per class for these special students. This boy is actually from Sendai, where he and his parents survived, but his home, school, everything was ruined by the tsunami.)

I read them two books, “The Rinky Dinky Donkey” (thanks Murrays!) and “Peek and Find Christmas Story” (thanks Jeeyun!). One of their favorite songs during Christmas time was a song about Christmas from the donkey’s perspective. The lyrics are about how the donkey is not the strongest or the fastest, etc but was the one chosen and is happy (honored?) to be the one to labor for God. “The Rinky Dinky Donkey” was a fun way of reading them an English version of that song, was easy for them to try to follow, and fun to listen to as it's all in rhyme.

The “Christmas Story” book was also like that as the older students performed the nativity story as part of their Christmas Service. The kids were fascinated that an English book had the same story and also that there are different pronunciations of the same name, for example, that “yo-se-fu” is “Joseph”. They had fun calling out the Japanese name of the characters of the story and the older kids would sometimes put up their hand if it was the role that they played.

After reading them the books, I told them that we should be thankful to Jesus. I wish I could have explained more, but alas... :( I taught them all to say “Thank you, Jesus”, and after a few practice runs, everyone received a slice of gingerbread as they lined up by the door and said it to me one at a time.

When I told the kids that it was gingerbread, most of them made a face ‘cause they don’t like ginger! Ginger’s used a lot in Japanese cooking so I explained to them that it doesn’t taste like the taste that they’re used to. I also asked them to share with their moms as some moms lamented that they didn’t get to taste the pumpkin bread I gave out in November. :)