Puzzle Hunt, just for 8-year-olds
The other day I mentioned I did a Santa scavenger hunt for my 11-year-old, right? Well, I wanted to do something similar for my 8-year-olds, except that I couldn't hide little notes all over the place because their habit is basically to come into my room and start looking through everything on every table and desk and whatnot.
So instead, I did a Puzzle Hunt, of sorts. I bought 4 "special santa" bags of snacks for 100 yen each, and put them in a nondescript blue bag that I'd bought as a prop for a class a few weeks ago, and then just put the bag on top of my jacket on a chair in the corner of the room before class. They go through things a lot, but tend to avoid the chair I keep my jacket on, and this time was no different.
Halfway through class I gave them a paper that had 12 pictures from their workbook, and boxes to say how many letters were in each word, and I had one red box in each word as well. If you filled in all the right words into the boxes, the red letters would spell out "In the blue bag". They've learned all of these words at one point or another, but I wondered if they'd manage to put it all together properly.
Amazingly, they did, and it only took a LITTLE bit of prompting. I told them "I have a Christmas present for you," and they all know "present", so they got excited, and then I put the puzzle on the table and they're like "What? Is this the present? How lame!" But they got out their workbooks and even all worked together to find the words and put them in the boxes and spell them right. So they finished all the words and said "Sensei, finished," and I'm like "Ok, look at the RED BOXES". The one really smart girl managed to write out "inthebluebag" and was like "This isn't English!" and so I pointed to the first two letters and said "What's that?" and she's like "OH!!! OH!! 'IN'!! WAKATTA!!!" and then managed to figure out the sentence, EXCEPT that all of the kids had decided that "blue" was pronounced "Blay" and was actually the color black, so they were looking around my room for a black bag. I managed not to laugh and got out our workbook and opened it to chapter 30, which had the colors, and then suddenly they're like "BLUE BAG!!!!" and went and got the bag and opened it up and were all like "YAY, CANDY".
Kids.
I taught them the words "angel", "star", "candy cane", "bell", and "candle", and then we sat down and made christmas cards. I wrote in English on a paper, "Dear Mom and Dad, Merry Christmas! From ______". I had printed out some cute clip art pictures earlier on, so we colored those in and put them on the front of cards and then they copied my English message for the inside. So they're all proud that they made English cards and their parents are going to be all proud that their kids are "learning English".
Oh yeah, here's what it all looked like: the blue bag, the special santa goodies bag, the puzzle, and the Christmas card that I colored in:
You know, making that puzzle actually took me a good 40 minutes or so, because I had to find words that would line up nicely, that would have all of the appropriate letters, and that weren't all just in their alphabet list, but that DID have pictures in the textbook. I wonder if GEOS would appreciate it if I made puzzles available for other teachers? I've made several word finds already and was vaguely debating making some sort of Christmas crossword for my classes next week (with a similar hook that the solution would tell them where to find some candy or some such thing). Or maybe GEOS would just tell me to stop wasting so much time on silly crap like this? Who knows. I doubt they hire English teachers based on their Puzzle Hunt acumen.
Oh, the best part was actually after class. Boy's mom actually came to GEOS to pick him and his brother up for once, so I met her for the first time. She's apparently a doctor and thus very busy. She also doesn't seem to understand much English, so I spoke to her very slowly. Anyway, Boy's contract was actually finished today, although Brother's still goes on until April, I don't really know why, but that's why we asked the parents to please come, so we could discuss what to do with them. I kind of figured that Boy would just be done with classes since, to be honest, he's really not that great at vocab and doesn't try that hard, although his phonics and reading/writing is decent. So, Boy's Mom asks Boy in Japanese, "Do you want to keep coming to English class here?" And Boy makes a funny face, then looks at Eri, then looks at his mom, then looks at me with a look of haha-you-cant-get-rid-of-me, and says "Yeah, I do." So she's like, "Okay, then you two will keep coming here!" and starts filling out the paperwork. Boy says, "Mom, my teacher understands Japanese." She looks at him and looks at me and says something like "Haha, don't be silly, of course she doesn't," and then he looked at me again, and I made a face at him, and he made a face back at me. And then his mom went back to filling out paperwork for renewing the contract and even paid for next year's books and everything. In the meantime Boy and his brother ran around the kids' room and threw stuff at the walls. Life as normal, I suppose.
So aside from that, I mostly spent today doing paperwork and stuff. My student who went to CA and Denver a few weeks ago came by to bring me some Ghirardelli chocolates she bought, which is all sorts of awesome. She's taking December off from classes so we made arrangements for her to come back in January. Yay.
After work I finally DID meet up with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rjmccall and catlyons, although not exactly as planned. They were going to come to Akabane at 10:15pm but got sidetracked by a random set of bizarre coincidences (including meeting up with another CMU guy completely randomly in Ueno Park). So instead, they called me at 10:20 to say "Er, we're still in Nippori, whoops." So I said "Ok, meet me at Nippori station in 15 minutes," and I hopped on a train and went to Nippori, and met them just as they got there, and we ended up at the Gusto diner/restaurant/whatever by the station which is apparently open until 5am. John had beer, Cat had plum wine, and I had a salad and a strawberry parfait, because you know, that's exactly what people should eat after a long day at work... or something. We only really had about an hour and a half before I had to leave to catch my last train home, but tomorrow night we should be able to do stuff for real.
I should probably mention that I have received several cards from people who I jokingly added my address to their Christmas Card LJ posts. That is super-cool and I will be bringing all of them to my English class to show everyone. I suck and haven't sent anyone cards in America or Japan. In theory New Year's is the big card-sending holiday here, but you know, I think I'd rather just declare a random personal postcard-sending holiday sometime when I'm not all busy with work.
Also, I got a Christmas present from Jason Lucas this morning, kind of -- he called me from Redmond, where he and Drew and Zach were all having dinner before getting together with the Fords and such, and I got to talk to them all for like half an hour. It was Thursday night at 6:30pm there and Friday morning 11:30am here. Funny how that works. Anyway, between that and hanging out with John and Cat tonight I am suddenly all homesick for smart geeky CMU people. Good thing Oren and Carl show up in a week, I suppose.
So instead, I did a Puzzle Hunt, of sorts. I bought 4 "special santa" bags of snacks for 100 yen each, and put them in a nondescript blue bag that I'd bought as a prop for a class a few weeks ago, and then just put the bag on top of my jacket on a chair in the corner of the room before class. They go through things a lot, but tend to avoid the chair I keep my jacket on, and this time was no different.
Halfway through class I gave them a paper that had 12 pictures from their workbook, and boxes to say how many letters were in each word, and I had one red box in each word as well. If you filled in all the right words into the boxes, the red letters would spell out "In the blue bag". They've learned all of these words at one point or another, but I wondered if they'd manage to put it all together properly.
Amazingly, they did, and it only took a LITTLE bit of prompting. I told them "I have a Christmas present for you," and they all know "present", so they got excited, and then I put the puzzle on the table and they're like "What? Is this the present? How lame!" But they got out their workbooks and even all worked together to find the words and put them in the boxes and spell them right. So they finished all the words and said "Sensei, finished," and I'm like "Ok, look at the RED BOXES". The one really smart girl managed to write out "inthebluebag" and was like "This isn't English!" and so I pointed to the first two letters and said "What's that?" and she's like "OH!!! OH!! 'IN'!! WAKATTA!!!" and then managed to figure out the sentence, EXCEPT that all of the kids had decided that "blue" was pronounced "Blay" and was actually the color black, so they were looking around my room for a black bag. I managed not to laugh and got out our workbook and opened it to chapter 30, which had the colors, and then suddenly they're like "BLUE BAG!!!!" and went and got the bag and opened it up and were all like "YAY, CANDY".
Kids.
I taught them the words "angel", "star", "candy cane", "bell", and "candle", and then we sat down and made christmas cards. I wrote in English on a paper, "Dear Mom and Dad, Merry Christmas! From ______". I had printed out some cute clip art pictures earlier on, so we colored those in and put them on the front of cards and then they copied my English message for the inside. So they're all proud that they made English cards and their parents are going to be all proud that their kids are "learning English".
Oh yeah, here's what it all looked like: the blue bag, the special santa goodies bag, the puzzle, and the Christmas card that I colored in:
You know, making that puzzle actually took me a good 40 minutes or so, because I had to find words that would line up nicely, that would have all of the appropriate letters, and that weren't all just in their alphabet list, but that DID have pictures in the textbook. I wonder if GEOS would appreciate it if I made puzzles available for other teachers? I've made several word finds already and was vaguely debating making some sort of Christmas crossword for my classes next week (with a similar hook that the solution would tell them where to find some candy or some such thing). Or maybe GEOS would just tell me to stop wasting so much time on silly crap like this? Who knows. I doubt they hire English teachers based on their Puzzle Hunt acumen.
Oh, the best part was actually after class. Boy's mom actually came to GEOS to pick him and his brother up for once, so I met her for the first time. She's apparently a doctor and thus very busy. She also doesn't seem to understand much English, so I spoke to her very slowly. Anyway, Boy's contract was actually finished today, although Brother's still goes on until April, I don't really know why, but that's why we asked the parents to please come, so we could discuss what to do with them. I kind of figured that Boy would just be done with classes since, to be honest, he's really not that great at vocab and doesn't try that hard, although his phonics and reading/writing is decent. So, Boy's Mom asks Boy in Japanese, "Do you want to keep coming to English class here?" And Boy makes a funny face, then looks at Eri, then looks at his mom, then looks at me with a look of haha-you-cant-get-rid-of-me, and says "Yeah, I do." So she's like, "Okay, then you two will keep coming here!" and starts filling out the paperwork. Boy says, "Mom, my teacher understands Japanese." She looks at him and looks at me and says something like "Haha, don't be silly, of course she doesn't," and then he looked at me again, and I made a face at him, and he made a face back at me. And then his mom went back to filling out paperwork for renewing the contract and even paid for next year's books and everything. In the meantime Boy and his brother ran around the kids' room and threw stuff at the walls. Life as normal, I suppose.
So aside from that, I mostly spent today doing paperwork and stuff. My student who went to CA and Denver a few weeks ago came by to bring me some Ghirardelli chocolates she bought, which is all sorts of awesome. She's taking December off from classes so we made arrangements for her to come back in January. Yay.
After work I finally DID meet up with
rjmccall and catlyons, although not exactly as planned. They were going to come to Akabane at 10:15pm but got sidetracked by a random set of bizarre coincidences (including meeting up with another CMU guy completely randomly in Ueno Park). So instead, they called me at 10:20 to say "Er, we're still in Nippori, whoops." So I said "Ok, meet me at Nippori station in 15 minutes," and I hopped on a train and went to Nippori, and met them just as they got there, and we ended up at the Gusto diner/restaurant/whatever by the station which is apparently open until 5am. John had beer, Cat had plum wine, and I had a salad and a strawberry parfait, because you know, that's exactly what people should eat after a long day at work... or something. We only really had about an hour and a half before I had to leave to catch my last train home, but tomorrow night we should be able to do stuff for real.I should probably mention that I have received several cards from people who I jokingly added my address to their Christmas Card LJ posts. That is super-cool and I will be bringing all of them to my English class to show everyone. I suck and haven't sent anyone cards in America or Japan. In theory New Year's is the big card-sending holiday here, but you know, I think I'd rather just declare a random personal postcard-sending holiday sometime when I'm not all busy with work.
Also, I got a Christmas present from Jason Lucas this morning, kind of -- he called me from Redmond, where he and Drew and Zach were all having dinner before getting together with the Fords and such, and I got to talk to them all for like half an hour. It was Thursday night at 6:30pm there and Friday morning 11:30am here. Funny how that works. Anyway, between that and hanging out with John and Cat tonight I am suddenly all homesick for smart geeky CMU people. Good thing Oren and Carl show up in a week, I suppose.