Toya Day 74: I Get Better

My voice had landed back in Chitose Airport, gotten over its jetlag and had a nice time in Hawaii. It had returned completely! The School Nurse was right, I think – it took a few days but I can now talk again!

Anyway, the Elementary School. We began the day with the 5th Grade class which we enjoy working with so much. They were basically reiterating the alphabet, so it was fairly simple to do. We were doing some puzzles wherein you had to join dots based on the letter called out to make a picture. It was simple, and the kids all breezed through it. At the end, however, we did a really odd version of the alphabet song –  it was even cheesier than Seven Steps! Well, maybe not, but it was very cheesy 😉

Next up was some good, old-fashioned physical education again. This time we began with the whole school, in a rather odd event somewhat like an egg and spoon race. But, of course, this being Japan, they used a ladle and a golf ball instead :S Oh, and our team came 5/6, but that’s besides the point!

Good old golf ball and ladle 😉

With the Second Grade, we played football in what can only be described as a highly competitive game! It ended nil-nil, with some close shots but no actual winners. After that we played an odd sort of football version of baseball, which is almost exactly as it sounds. I scored a home run, though!

Then, we had the third and fourth grades, again for P.E. This time, it was rather more simple – they had several different ways to catch a ball (with different levels of difficulty) and they were basically boosting their hand-eye coordination.

As we went up the Fourth Grade classroom for lunch, I noticed something on the wall – Dragon Quest Characters! Each student had a level assigned to them, and the teacher said that they gained a level for every good piece of homework they did. This is frankly brilliant – it’s turning homework into an RPG!

I love the Yon-nen RPG! It genuinely is a great idea, though 🙂

After lunch and a brief bit of snowball fighting with our students ( 😉 ), we went to the sixth grade. Here, we reiterated shapes again, adding this time the new dimension of size (i.e, large square, small square and medium square). We also played bingo – I won a game and I lost a game – such is the way with Toya Shougakko!

As Toya Shougakko ended, we headed for the After School Club. There, nothing of much note happened beyond us looking at some photos of past volunteers. This was quite interesting, as the photos dated as far back as 2002 and Machiko could put a story to all of them. Apparently, Shiro even once went to Nakajima Island! It’s not exactly his scene, I think – there’s no Louis Vuitton there, after all! Dodgeball then ensued, and we educated the children in what Fruitella are 😉

Oh, Shiro… You really are an incredibly fasionable bloke, you know 😉

In short, they’re awesome.

The evening was a rather simple one ‑ there was no Yosakoi so it was a relaxing night of Onsenning and playing assorted videogames 🙂