Japanese 5&6 year olds
...written on 2000-10-14, @ 23:56:57
Saturday Oct 7, 2000
Yesterday I had my first PEC (Primary English Class) and JEC (Junior English Class). I had been kind of leery about teaching the younger crowds (3-7 year olds) since I haven't really had any experience, but once I saw the faces of Shiunya and Akira at the classroom door, my heart melted.
They belted out a happy "Hello Teacher" to Manami, but when they saw me, they stopped in surprise and said in Japanese, "Who is that?". I smiled and invited them in. I introduced myself and played a game with our names and who was a boy and who was a girl. I pointed to each student and teacher and they would answer "boy" or "girl". At first I went slow, but then I went faster and faster and tricked them and we all laughed at the game.
Their lesson was on bedtime and they had a stick puppet that had a set of pajamas, school clothes, a bed, and eyes that would open and close. So they learned "open, close, awake, asleep, put on, take off, good morning, good night, etc." They were rambunctious little rascals, and would trot off screaming something in Japanese, but they would always run back to teacher to learn the next word. They were also able to pronouce the tougher sounds that adults cannot, like the l and r sounds. They even got the "th" sound!
The next class I had a 7 year old girl. Her mother sat in with her 8 month old son. Her lesson was on the face and parts of the body. In the PEC & JEC classes there are support materials such as videos, cds, puppets, flashcards, etc, so it is relatively easy to fill a 50 minute class so long as you can keep your young charges' interest.