English Time - I Love You

February's theme was "I Love You". Perfect for February, don't you think? :)

The Bible verse for the month was "Love your neighbor as yourself." Juhee's class had memorized it in English and Japanese and another one of the classes memorized half of it in English - "Love your neighbor". =D

I taught them, "I love you" using hand motions - "I" point at oneself, "love" make heart shape with hands, "you" point at someone. We did that a few times and the kids loved it when I pointed to them. They would give me a shy smile. They were so cute! :)

The book I'd prepared to read to them was "Snuggle Puppy! A Little Love Song" which was sent to us by Pathway Bible Fellowship, the English Ministry of our home church in Milpitas, as part of our Christmas care package. I'd sent my Amazon wishlist and they delivered! The wishlist was made up of books that I wanted for our kids that I thought might also be able to come in handy for English teaching. I'd been reading this one to Juhee at home and had come up with a cool rhythm (wouldn't go so far as to call it a rap... =D) to kinda read / sing it in.

Before reading the book, I had them practice "Oooo~" and "I love you" a few times as it comes out in the book and I wanted their participation. I told them to look out for lots of "o"s together and that that's when they had to say "Oooo~". I cued them in on the "I love you"s by saying "I" and pointing to myself and pausing so we could say the rest together. There were big "Oooo~"s and small ones so we said them in big voices and small voices. We had so much fun! :)

I'd also taken with me the singing dog that teammate Jess's parents had sent to Sungjae as his Christmas present (and the super soft scarf that I'm wearing for me!). We had one that had been handed down to us while we were in San Jose, but it got mold on it during the rainy season so we'd had to throw it away. :( But God provided us with a new one! The dog also just so happens to say "I love you" so I had the dog say it a couple of times which fascinated the kids. The kids were even more surprised when they found out that not only does the dog speak English, it sings in English too! :) They were very impressed. ;) I taught them the vocab for "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" and we sang together with the dog. It's a song that they're already familiar with so they had a great time doing the motions and singing along.

Thank you Pathway and Jess's parents for providing ministry tools! :)