I have been following with interest the report form Sir Jim Rose regarding primary education. I was highly influenced by his original Rose Review in 2006 that pushed synthetic phonics to the forefront of the UK's education system and have adapted a lot of the reviews recommendations for my own classes with great results.

One item highlighted in the report was the use of sand trays for children learning the shapes of the letters. There seem to a few companies supplying the UK market but I couldn't find a single sand tray in Japan so... I decided to make my own.



The design is really quite simple; it's just a tray with sand in it. So I knocked up a couple of sturdy box type trays over the course of a evening. The next day I laminated a piece of construction paper and laid it in the bottom. The I added the sand, which I bought from my local pet shop (it's the kind used in aquariums.)



Actually the amount of sand needed in each box was much less than I expected as I wanted the laminated colour paper to show through when a line was traced. I'd also made a couple of smoothers to flatten the sand after each use but it seems that a quick shake of the tray levels everything off.

So far I've used them in two of our Stage 1 classes with students ranging in age from 3 to 5 years old. The sand trays were very well received and we all had fun tracing the target letters in the sand.

This month, February, our theme is to do with cooking. It's about as close as I wanted to go to doing a Valentines theme without the hearts and stuff. As we are in a first floor location we try to have an ever changing window display to keep the interest up, so I sketched up this really simple recipe for Chocolate Cornflake Cakes.

Should you be so inclined the recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

100g Chocolate bar
55g butter
1 tbs Maple syrup
1 tbs cocoa
110g cornflakes

Method
1. In heat-proof mixing bowl, break the chocolate bar into small pieces.
2. Add the butter, Maple syrup and cocoa.
3. Place the bowl over a pan of boiling water to melt the chocolate.
4. Stir the chocolate, butter, syrup and cocoa mixture until smooth.
5. Stir in the cornflakes.
6. Spoon the mixture into paper cases.
7. Place the cakes in the refrigerator to set. ENJOY!

You can also find a downloadable PDF file of the Chocolate Cornflake Cake recipe here

Long time since my last post...the end of the year was just so hectic. What with Halloween and Christmas Parties to arrange for all our students as well as themed material in the lessons we were left with very little extra time.

So I suppose yet again my New Year resolution will be to post more often.

Watch this space but don't hold your breath!

We've just received our first delivery of wooden toys from the Czech Republic and are busy creating a 'web shop' in order to show our wares.
The webshop is still very much a work in progress (I know only there's only 30 something shopping days left to Christmas but hopefully they'll be a demand all year round!)
The webshop is in Japanese only but as it's very image driven you should be able to navigate around. And should you be interested in any of the items, and are in Japan, just send us an e-mail and we'll guide you through the process.

Oh almost forgot, a quick explanation of the name. We decided to call the wooden toy part of our business, 'Daisy'. I'd originally wanted to call it Upsy Daisy after hearing a mother use this with child the last time I was back in the UK but it doesn't work well when it's rendered in a katakana pronunciation.

Check out the site here: Daisy Wooden Toys

I was taking a quick look at sites that link back to us and discovered this little gem of a website for the Waseda area. It's called waseda.info and surprisingly can be found at www.waseda.info.

Unfortunately it's only in Japanese but it uses a lot of visuals and maps so armed with a little basic Japanese reading ability you can use it to find bars, restaurants, shops, services and of course englishpool's entry in the Waseda area.

I particularly like the interviews with various shop/business owners in the Waseda area. I think it would be good to offer some kind of video content on this site but don't really know enough about it.

Maybe I could approach waseda.info to do an interview at englishpool...