World Cup

We showed Japan's first two World Cup matches on the big screen at our preschool. The first game was a heartbreaker, with Japan leading until the last ten minutes or so of the game and then giving up three quick goals to Australia. Tonight's game was better, a scoreless tie against Croatia. Now all Japan has to do is beat Brazil on Thursday and there's a good chance of making it to the second round. Slim chance but anything can happen. Here's hoping!

Good Bye Mr. Roger!

Roger has been a big help as a volunteer since we began. The kids looked forward to his coming every week. Because he's moving back to America later this month, today was his last day in the preschool. We'll all miss him. Thank you Mr. Roger!

Paper Airplanes

For those who don't feel like clicking to see the June newsletter mentioned in the previous post, I'll reprint my article from it here.

Lessons in Life from Paper Airplanes

Recently our students, especially the boys, have shown tremendous interest in paper airplanes. They make them with any available time and any available paper. At first I thought it was interesting, then I began to worry that they should be spending their time "more productively," and finally I began to see that they were giving themselves quite an eduction. At least a hundred paper airplanes have been folded, flown and discarded over the past week or two. As I watched (and joined in the fun) I began to realize what wonderful lessons there are in the humble paper airplane. The following is a list of timeless truths the children have learned from folding and flying their airplanes. Of course they would express these truths in their own words if they expressed them at all.

• "A good start is half the battle." -Irish Proverb. (If the first fold is is good, the airplane has an excellent chance to fly well; if not, no way.)
• "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison, while working on the lightbulb. (By not being afraid to make mistakes, the children learned several ways not to make good paper airplanes, and in the process several ways to make very good ones.)
• "Imitation is at least 50 percent of the creative process" -Jamie Buckingham. (Starting from one of the few basic airplane patterns and improvising from there works better than folding randomly and ignoring what is known to work.)
• "Don't judge a book by its cover" -American Proverb. (Looks and aerodynamics aren't always correlated.)

And of course the children are exploring the physics of flight, improving eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills, and enjoying themselves immensely. Fortunately we have a lot of scrap paper.

I am learning from the paper airplanes too. I'm learning that children are much smarter than we usually give them credit for. They tend to know what they need to learn and to find out ways to teach themselves. Of course we need to guide their learning, and I think that one good way is to prepare an environment with many stimulating objects to explore. We do our best at the preschool to make an environment that encourages learning and exploration. I'm sure you do similar things at home. Let's share ideas with one another.

Growth and Torn Trousers

We've grown since my last entry. The obvious growth is in numbers. We now have another student and a few more classroom volunteers. The less obvious growth is in attitudes and character. I'm really proud of our students. They are kind, thoughtful, cheerful and welcoming. They have become great friends with one another. It makes coming to work a joy for me every morning (OK, almost every morning . . . unless I've stayed up too late watching soccer or 24).

I've been taking the five-year-olds aside for some Three Rs time each day. I'm impressed with their appetites, especially for reading and writing. Some of the children have been folding paper into books, drawing illustrations and writing stories. Of course they need help with spelling but it's so fun to see them exercising their creativity in that way.

Blogs are nothing if not a venue to humiliate oneself so I'll share an embarrassing story from yesterday. As background, you should know that all children are required to keep a change of clothes at the preschool. Drinks get spilled, mud puddles attack, the toilet is sometimes too far away to bother with, etc. Anyway, most children have had to change their clothes at least once. The other day, I told my wife that it would be a good idea for us to keep a change of clothes at the preschool too just in case. Alas, I didn't heed my own advice. Yesterday morning, while squatting in the office to set down a box with some donated sound gear, I heard the dreaded tearing sound of fabric. That's right, my six-year-old pants (trousers to the Brits) had finally given out in the seam and there was a huge rip up the back. This happened just as the parents began arriving to drop off their children. I kept strategically seated or with my back to the wall until I had a chance to ask a classroom helper to run to the store for me (thank you Michiko!). So to the parents and grandparents who noticed that I was acting strange yesterday morning, now you know the reason and I apologize.

Why do I embarrass myself online like this? Mostly because hardly anyone reads this blog. But more admirably perhaps is that I was taught to take trying situations and look for a lesson in them, to think about what God might be teaching me. After this experience, I began to think that maybe we adults give ourselves too many liberties. Maybe we should treat ourselves a little more like we treat children--I mean always to have a change of clothes on hand, always to eat our vegetables before our dessert (expand on that metaphor if you wish), always to apologize and to forgive quickly, and to keep a set bedtime. With that in mind, I'll put off starting that next season of 24 until vacation begins, but the World Cup only comes once in four years so there will certainly be a few late nights watching soccer in the next month or so.

If you've read this far, you certainly deserve to be among the first to see the new web site I'm working on for the preschool. We've had people tell us that with 100% Japanese on the main page, they didn't know there was any English on our site at all. The new site is very rough still but if you care to look at it, you can find it at http://newhopepreschool.googlepages.com/home. The June newsletter is here. Feedback is always appreciated, either as comments to this blog or by email to jseminoff [at] newhopeclc.jp .