HJIS Sendai Aoba Class Blogs 2026-27: Week 8

Hello, Desert Class families!

Morning & Afternoon Meeting

During our morning meetings, we sang our hello song, weather song, and day of the week song. We also discussed classroom responsibilities, with students taking on roles such as caretaker, line leader, and lunch helper. The students had lots of fun singing and dancing to “Dynamite” as we practiced for our upcoming Sports Day.

In our afternoon meetings, we read "Mr brown can moo! can you?" and "Noni tastes". The students were encouraged to participate by joining in with repeated phrases and actions throughout the stories.

Language & Literacy

Preschool

This week in Language & Literacy, we reviewed all of the sounds from Jolly Phonics Set 1: s, a, t, i, p, and n. The students practiced recognizing initial sounds in words and continued developing their blending skills to help build early reading confidence.

Throughout the week, the students participated in many fun and active phonics activities. We played musical chairs with letter sounds, “Kick the Cone” where the students kicked a ball toward cones with different sounds, and phonics bingo games to practice sound recognition in an engaging way.

The students also enjoyed creating a variety of letter crafts using materials and objects that matched each initial sound. These hands-on activities helped reinforce letter recognition while also supporting creativity and fine motor development.

During Parents Day, families were able to observe and participate in some of our classroom activities. The students enjoyed phonics letter matching games and salt painting activities where they used q-tips to dab color onto the letter sounds. It was wonderful to see everyone learning together and having so much fun!

Maths

Preschool

This week in Math, we reviewed the numbers 1–10 and focused on number sequencing, number symbol recognition, and matching quantities to numbers through a variety of hands-on activities and games.

The students practiced counting and fine motor skills by threading cut straws onto pipe cleaners while counting carefully as they worked. We also enjoyed playing number ring toss games, which encouraged the students to recognize and identify numbers in a fun and active way.

Another favorite activity this week was number writing in shaving foam. The students had lots of fun practicing number formation while exploring messy sensory play. We also created a number fence craft using popsicle sticks, where the students placed the numbered sticks in the correct order to practice sequencing numbers from 1–10.

During story time, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and counted the different fruits and foods the caterpillar ate throughout the story. The students enjoyed joining in with the counting and connecting numbers to real objects from the book.

Topic Exploration

This week’s theme was The Five Senses. The students explored the five senses, taste, hearing, smell, touch, and sight, through a variety of hands-on activities, sensory games, discussions, and crafts. We talked about how our senses help us understand and explore the world around us.

For taste, the students made a mouth and tongue craft and placed different foods onto the tongue to represent different tastes. We explored foods such as lemon, honey, meat, coffee, and rice crackers while discussing tastes like sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and umami.

To explore hearing, we played a “Guess the Sound” game. Different materials such as rice, pom poms, and paper were placed inside eggs, and the students listened carefully to guess what was making the sound. We also talked about whether the sounds were loud or quiet.

For smell, the students explored a variety of mystery scents and tried to guess what they were smelling. We discussed whether the smells were pleasant or unpleasant and talked about our favorite scents. The students then created flower crafts with scented cotton placed in the center so they could smell their flowers afterward.

During our touch exploration, the students used a mystery box activity where they reached inside without looking and described how different objects felt. They practiced using descriptive words such as bumpy, smooth, sticky, soft, and rough.

For sight, we explored the idea of shiny and dull objects. The students discussed different things they can see and compared how some materials reflect light while others do not. They then created shiny and dull crafts using foil and tissue paper to represent the different textures and appearances.

Free Play

Here are some more pictures of friends playing together in the classroom, in the Big Room, at the park, and enjoying other topics, events and activities at school.