The Joy of Teaching Nursery Children (or, There's no rest for the wicked!)

I remember, back in my first month of living in Japan, the first teaching job I had to do was two 40 minute sessions at a kindergarten in Nanyo. This came as a bit of a shock to me, having been told I would do elementary schools and kindergarten schools a little later into my stint as the Nanyo ALT.

But nevertheless, I went forth and had some fun with little 3-5 year old in pink (for girls) and blue (naturally for boys) ponchos. In the boiling heat I was absolutely exhausted and sweating profoundly by the end of the first session, but somehow managed to pull through with the second one.

Teaching such young kids is great fun and I do enjoy it. And Japanese kids are extremely cute. All I'm really doing is playing a few games with them and singing some songs. They're fascinated simply by the fact that you're a foreigner and I'll probably be the first interaction they get with a western English speaking foreigner. We learn a few numbers, or a few colours - my last session was about animals and we learnt English animal noises too. (Do you know that in Japanese, mice go 'chu chu' and frogs go 'gero gero'?!)


So having done a full long term of Junior High Schools - I was invited back to the same kindergarten school, Tsubame, and also had another visit to Akayu Nursery school in January. The BoE gave me a three week holiday, whilst most other JETs had a two week holiday - this extra week was to allow some time for those special visits! All I can say is, to my mum (and all the other teachers of 3-5 year olds out there, I don't know how you do it everyday for 7 or so hours, and that I'm glad I only have to do it about once every term!

The kids hang on my every word!

We do a little song and dance.