Now that I’ve officially graduated, I have so much more time to do
interesting things, especially for my job and in and around Kyoto. It’s
helping me re-awaken the artistic side of me that had to be ignored
while I was in college, and I’m loving it!
Recently, I’ve been able to
let my creative side loose again, and it’s felt wonderful. At work,
since I work with mostly kindergartners, I am constantly given free
reign to design new games and activities that help the children
incorporate English. The first thing I made for my classes was a felt
and laminated paper crepe shop. Children line up and purchase crepes
with fake money, while another student “makes” the crepes out of yellow
felt pancakes, white tissue paper “whipped cream” and laminated slices
of fruit. The point of the game is dialog practice, but it also helps
the children learn to wait their turn, do things in proper order and pay
close attention to what another person says (there are four possible
crepes choices). The kids have really loved it, and I hope to branch off
soon and create a burger, cake, ice cream and yakitori stand in the
near future as well.
In addition, I’ve also created a full scale board game based on the
fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, which is a useful story in EFL
language schools since it is a world-famous, simple story. To help the
children get used to the concept of “losing a turn” without getting too
upset, the game incorporates a reward system that ensures that any child
that has already lost a turn in the game can’t be eaten by the wolf.
Let me explain:
The rules are relatively simple. The objective of the game is to get to
Grandma’s house (and instead of counting squares, EFL students are
encouraged to say the vocabulary illustrated on the space). If a child
lands on a flower space, they lose a turn (since LRRH stopped along the
way to pick flowers). However, before the game starts, flowers are lain
all across the board like so:
When a child loses a turn, they take a
flower of their choosing. The last curve of the board, where the wolf
is, is the challenge. If a child lands on the wolf and has a flower,
they’re safe. If they don’t have a flower, they have to return to the
space with the Woodcutter, since he was the one that saved Little Red
Riding Hood in the story. The children really seem to enjoy playing this
game, to the point that many children get upset if they don’t collect a
flower before getting to the wolf’s side of the board. (Hasbro, call
me! XP)
It was really fun creating these things for the school,
and the mothers seem to like them, so I hope to carry on this tradition
by making a game for Rapunzel, the Princess and the Pea and possibly
Goldilocks and the Three Bears as well. If I had any talent with plastic
sculpting, I would make a game for Jack and the Beanstalk as well. It
will all take time, but it’s so fun doing it I don’t even realize I’m
working- and the kids don’t realize they’re learning, so everyone wins.
Outside of work, I’ve also been
volunteering at a local magazine to help them with translations. They
asked me to do the feature story of this bi-monthly article, so I got
some practice writing in Japanese again, and actually made it to the
front page. As of this moment, their website hasn’t been updated, so
doesn’t reflect the new issue, but the magazine is Life in Kyoto,
and the issue will probably be available for at least a few weeks more
in paper. The other day one of my adult students actually came to class,
surprised that she had seen my name in one of the magazines she reads,
so I feel pretty good about it. The article is about Kitano Tenman-Gu, a
temple that I’ve written about in the past on this blog.
Here’s hoping this inspiration keeps strong! There’s so much I want to do!