Maximo's First Presentation - Family Book

Maximo has a presentation tomorrow.  He brought his notes home to practice this weekend.  I think this may be the first oral presentation he has ever really done... and it's in Japanese.

Maximo's 6th Birthday

The boys!

It's always a busy week and an extra stress to celebrate Maximo's birthday the first full week of school, but in the end, we're always happy we do something.

Yusei and Maximo cracking up at Sean

After much deliberation, we decided to just have 5 of his friends over for a small party.  There was a typhoon looming, but luckily it lost steam and we got to have the party - and even made it outside for some water balloon fun.

Happy Boys!

We had a great day.   Here's the album of photos.

What's a party without tears?
Maximo fell off the bed when the boys were rough housing - but he was fine.

Maximo's Conference - KA 2013

In the Spring of each school year, students share their work and learning with their parents.  It is a nice conference time as it is totally led by students.  It's amazing what a 5 year old can share and all the amazing things they did this year!

Sharing work with Dad

Showing off his class's bean plants

Showing his class's Very Busy Spider presentation on an iPad

His "animated" spider debut

Here's the actual video made by @shigetasensei (Ms. Shigeta, the AMAZING ES Tech Teacher):

The Very Busy Spider from KA-B on Vimeo.

Maximo showing off his class's garden

A Wacky Week with Super Cute Kids

Maximo with his artwork

Handsome boy before the concert

As far as work was concerned, this week was insane.  John traveled to Beijing with the badminton team and I was busy with work with "my normal kookiness"  and two visitors this week at school.

But, as always, this was balanced with amazing kid stuff.

Thursday was absolutely insane.

It started with an Opening Ceremony for the APAC conference our school hosted for high school girls' soccer.  The younger grades acted as "Spirit Clubs" for the visiting schools.  It was Maximo's favorite thing to dress up in blue and red to support SAS - Shanghai American School and then get to ask questions to the team with his classmates.

Later in the day he had his KA concert.

Maximo & his classmates

Here are some highlights:

the day ended with his Swim class.
Actually, we ended it with Happy Meals and ice cream at McDonalds.  Because it was a long day and I was single parenting.  But it was a great, long, FULL day.

Celebrating Peru in Japan

As most of you know, there are quite a few teachers at Canadian Academy who once worked at our former school, Colegio Roosevelt - the American School in Lima, Peru.  Some of them we worked with before, some worked there before our time.  Among us all there is only one true Peruvian, Carlota, but we all have Peru in our hearts.

Cusqueña beiru and a pisco sour

Carlota introduced us all to a Peruvian restaurant last weekend, called El Trujillanito in Fukae, in Kobe, Japan, which is only a few train stops away from us on Rokko Island.   I didn't want to get my hopes up and just figured it would be a nice night out with a group of friends, especially since Aimee will be leaving us in a couple of weeks.

We were pleasantly surprised.  Although the restaurant was small and the kitchen was made up of a few hot plates and jammed into a bar area of the restaurant, the food was delicious and brought us back to a very special time in our lives.

Since we knew we would be ordering and sharing a lot, we sent our orders to the restaurant on Thursday.  From the clams to the aji de gallina, to the roasted chicken to the lomo saltado to the ceviche right down to the Pisco Sours, everything tasted like it was straight out of Peru and it was DELICIOUS!

Lomo Saltado

Ceviche

 We will definitely be returning to El Trujillanito with our little peruano and japonesa.

More Kid Holidays - Dr. Suess' Birthday

Maximo's amazing tech teacher (and my great geeky-girl colleague, Kae) does so many fun activities with the kids during their tech time each week.  They use the MAC desktops and iPads weekly. It's amazing the tech skills he has at 5.

For Dr. Suess's birthday, she took pictures of the kids in their pajamas in front of a green screen.

Valentine's Day x 100

February Fourteenth wasn't only Valentine's Day this year.  It was also the 100th day of school.  Maximo had a very exciting day between giving all his classmates Spiderman Valentines with tattoos

Homework - Creating the 100 chart
We use 1¥ coins

Maximo wrote a Valentine for each classmate.

and seeing Zero the Hero rollerblade into his classroom to celebrate the day and to give all the kids "zero" candies.

Zero the Hero and the KA class

And it's mid February

This seems to happen all the time... again another half month has slipped away without a word from Los Lemleys. It has been really busy the past few weeks. We went from report cards being due to me slipping off to Tokyo for a conference to John and I both enrolled in Masters' level course work to me leaving for Hokkaido for the middle school Ski Trip. I'm also trying to manage three blogs right now - one for my classroom, one for my coursework and this one!  No wonder we are tired!

Anyways, this will be short, but there are pictures to share. The kids are well. I'll try to spend time posting about the kids soon - Maximo is READING, and swimming and "speaking in English, and Spanish and Japanese". Lola uses her two year old stubbornness and ear-shattering volume on us on a daily basis, but it cute and talking up a storm, slipping between English and Japanese.

Here are some photo albums to catch you up on Los Lemleys:

My Trip to Tokyo for the Google Apps for Education Summit at the American School in Japan.

Google Conference - Weekend In Tokyo

Miki and Yuto's Birthday Party that we attended last weekend and had a great time:

Miki & Yuto's Birthday

My 365 (which will not be 365 in the end) photo album. I'm not going to quit, but it's not happening everyday... and I'm losing track of which photo I'm doing for which day. I'm going to try to start to label them with the date to keep it better organized!

A Photo A Day 2013

Maximo and his Senses

Japan Days

Apparently I can either take a picture a day or blog, but not both well.  We had a full work week and vacation feels far far away.

This week at Canadian Academy, were Japan Days.  There were many different activities at all grade levels celebrating Japanese culture.

Yesterday, Maximo pounded mochi with his Japanese teachers:

Today he and I dressed up in our finest Japanese clothing.  He wore Japananese (yukata) pajamas and I wore a kimono (untraditionally) as an open jacket.  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures.  I'm hoping his teacher did, so I can steal the pictures!

Maximo's School Portfolio

 At Canadian Academy, all students keep a digital portfolio.  It's just like those large portfolios students have been compiling every year and send home to their parents at the end of the year to show their work and growth, but it's keep on a blog.  Students add to it every year they are at CA to show that they are IB students and give examples of how are students are aspiring to our Mission.

Here is Maximo's portfolio, so far, this year. 


October 2011 - Maximo explaining His Family that he created in clay

January 2012 - Explaining one of his art pieces

Last week, Maximo started a new unit at school about Changes.  They have had a LOT of fun hands on activities where they observe changes.   Here are a few:

 Making Obleck

 Making a tie dye shirt with a 6th grader

Making (and eating) pancakes... on Pajama Day

D'Artist!

A couple of pictures from Max's Art Show this week (taken by his teachers):

Max in front of his art

Daddy asking Maximo about his art

Book Character Day - Maximo

On Friday, while John and I were sitting through a marathon of parent conferences, Maximo had Book Character Day at school.  The younger grades had a day where they would dress up like their favorite character from a book and show how that character emulates an IB Learner Profile attribute.

We asked Maximo what character he wanted to be, and held our breath that it was actually a character that we could easily make a costume for.  He chose the "Mr. Mechanic Tow Truck" from My Truck Is Stuck.

 

Image from: www.readingnook.com

We had to help Maximo with the Learner Profile attribute.  Mr. Mechanic is both knowlegeable and caring.  We were going to go with caring because it's a bit easier for a four year old to understand and explain, but his teacher convinced us to put him in the "knowledgeable" category.

John wanted to take on the challenge... and he did an amazing job - it's just made out of a box from the copier room.  I think he's just signed himself up for many Halloween costumes in the future! 

Here he is fastening the straps to the car:

 Mr. Max Mechanic

 Maximo "snuggling Daddy" while he tightens the straps!

Another Tiny Concert

Satu-Satu, an Indonesian song

Sung by Maximo in a loose English translation

Sports Day 2011

Monday was Sports Day in Japan.  I wrote about it a little bit here two years ago.  It really is a fantastic day at our school.  It's a half day of school where kids participate in sporting events and most of the students' parents attend.  It's a national holiday and most businesses are closed so parents (and grandparents) come, socialize and take a million pictures of their kids.

The morning starts off with stretching and the chicken dance with Freddie the Falcon (our mascot).  Maximo's class gets to lead the whole school with a couple of high school helpers in the chicken dance.  He loved it, and did not mind at all that he was in the middle of a huge field surrounded by about 1,000 people.

Afterwards, Maximo's class went back to the gym to participate in some activities, since the whole school activities would probably be a bit overwhelming and challenging for them.

I was a leader at the parachute activity and John lead the Hula hoop events.  It's really great to see the high school kids buddied up with the younger kids and everyone working together.  It's also really nice to see so many parents at the school.

After the morning activities, John and I shared a duty for the high school and middle school events, so we could flip-flop and go participate and share Sports Day with Maximo and his class.

 Maximo's class gets to meet Freddie the Falcon before heading to the field

 Maximo boogin' on down to the chicken dance - look at those arms!

 *Snack time*

 Playing sports in the gym with his classmates and all the parents looking on

 Race on!

 Scooter race

 Playing outside

 Posing with Freddie before we head off to the PTA BBQ!

We all had a great, great day!