Dream Kids House – Playing in the Pool

2018.08.10

●　Dream Kids House – Playing in the Pool

Hello! This is Satsuki Abe from Dream Kids House.

The long wait is over as we finally got to use our summer pool! Even though it was the rainy season, there wasn’t so much rain, and the last half of June was particularly hot with day after day of extreme heat. The children were all saying to their friends “I want to use the pool right away!”

The kids all spend their days with native teachers and bilingual staff in their daily life.

The children naturally absorb English in this environment.

The pool at our school is a vinyl kids pool covered with a tent and situated just next to the school entrance. The children do warm up exercises and then enter the pool.

Here is the kinder class pool.

There is a homeroom teacher always watching the children.

We use the hose to make it rain as well. The children all cheer at this.

It looks like a lot of fun, doesn’t it?

Enthusiastic play is indispensable for the development of the children.

The large water cannons are popular with all the kids. Sometimes they just take them, but there are many times when they talk amongst themselves to decide an order for which to play with them.

A photo with the teacher. Say cheese!

It’s a water battle with the teacher!

The children can communicate smoothly in English with the native teachers.

The children can smile and laugh with their favorite friends.

Being in contact with your friends is very important for development at a young age.

Everyone in class gets along together. This summer we made a lot of fond memories of fun days at the pool.

In the Kinder class we break up the class into three groups which will use the pool one group at a time.

For the groups not in the pool, they play inside the school until their turn in the pool comes up.

They knit thinly cut colored paper. As the number of pieces of paper increases, it also gets more complicated to tie them together. The children challenge themselves in increasing difficulty a bit at a time, going from 3 pieces of paper to 5, 7, etc. While considering the arrangement of the colors, they can knit neatly without gaps.

We can make anything we want to. This is a machine for knitting woolen yarn.

While seriously thinking about color placement, we thread through the next layer. Without having our attention wander, we focus intently on our creation.

The teachers also offer advice for children wondering what to create. Their friends are there, too.

Once we decide what we are going to make, we soon start making it.

The children cultivate not only English ability during play, but also concentration and imagination.

When the children do not understand something, they call for the teachers or their classmates to help them. Children learn from their serious focus on the teacher’s hands.