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Received these two tea towels from my parents back in England.
(I think they are celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, happening later this year.)

Ringtons is a long established company with old fashioned values, as in they still sell tea and coffee supplies door-to-door. As well as tasting great a lot of the teas and coffees are packed in great looking tin cans.

You can read more about the history of Ringtons here. On a language point you'll notice that the name is Ringtons with no apostrophe, the reason for this is explained on their website.]]> http://www.englishpool.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry120126-125321 Phonic Reading Rods end up thrown all over the classroom. (Does anybody have any luck with these, great idea, but everytime I try to use them the children just go wild!)
The rods didn't work out so we pressed on with the lesson. we've been using a set of cards to teach the verbs 'eating', 'sitting', 'running', 'walking', 'swimming', 'sleeping' etc. For some reason they feature different animals doing the actions and are as such unrelated to the actual task.
When I reviewed these verb cards yesterday in the Elementary A class I was expecting the children just to tell me the verb. Well, imagine my surprise when they started to make sentences 'The giraffe is eating', 'The horse is running' etc.
Great stuff, I was so proud that I forgot all about them throwing the reading rods about.


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Picture dominoes of various sorts have been a regular feature of our Sprouts and Kinder classes. The concept of the game can be taught to 4 year old's in 5 minutes, or so. Using pictures of pre-taught vocabulary, it makes a great reinforcing activity.

But I'd never really tried it in our beans class (0~3 years old,) until yesterday. We had a theme based around the Old McDonald song, using the slow and gentle version from Super Simple Songs. We'd used some flashcards/photographs of animals and as a final activity I reached for the box of Farmyard Dominoes.
While this age group don't usually have a grasp of winning and losing, the children soon understood that they had to match the animals from their cards. It was also a great chance to reinforce the 'taking turns' idea. Naturally its difficult keeping children of this age still, so I let them wander around if they wanted. All in all it was a successful activity and a lot of fun to boot!

The set of picture dominoes I used are made by Orchard Toys. All their games are made in England and have great durability (we use them in class almost daily!) Unfortunately there are not many stockists in Japan but I have seen some of their games at Bornelund.]]> http://www.englishpool.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry111124-120235

How the year has flown past...only about a month left before Christmas and only 24 days until the englishpool Christmas Party!]]> http://www.englishpool.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry111025-121207 eigonohondana a new service from englishpool to allow people across all of Japan to borrow English language graded readers. Reader series carried at the moment include Oxford Reading Tree, Project X, Floppy's Phonics, Songbirds, Rigby Star Independent and a few Scholastic Science Readers.

Basically for a low monthly subscription you will receive up to 10 books per month. Sending and returning postage are included in the price! There are over 300 titles to choose from at the moment and we will be adding more over the coming months.

The website is (mostly) in Japanese but as a lot of it is image driven it shouldn't be too problematic if you're just having a look around. (Note: The catalog pages are mostly bilingual!)

If you're interested in finding out more and need assistance navigating the pages please feel free to contact us.

We are working on adding more English pages so please bear with us.

eigonohondana
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We made these cute little Halloween finger puppets in the sprouts classes this week.
Really simple to make, black construction paper, scissors and a few scraps for decoration. I like to concertina the black paper and then use the scissors in front of the class, letting them take guesses as to what I might be creating.

Once made we sang 10 Little Witches from the Let's Sing CD.

Happy Halloween]]> http://www.englishpool.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry111008-164842 http://storynory.jp/ which offers free audio stories in English. Haven't used it as yet but looks interesting. English version can be found at http://storynory.com/]]> http://www.englishpool.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry110821-163419


It's mostly trees from the garden.

In the afternoon I visited my old friend and his family. He lives in a very pretty village and a short walk away from Cedar Farm. At Cedar Farm we fed the animals and then went for a coffee at the Cedar Farm Cafe which had some of best coffee I've ever drank. Apparently they roast the coffee at the cafe using this huge ancient machine and it certainly seems worth it. I left with two bags of their Italian Blend which as I write this I can still smell from two rooms away! Powerful stuff!

Also found a well stocked art shop where I picked up a special gift from my daughter...

Here'a picture of a pig;



...and one of a goat;




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Located up the hill from the city centre are two cathedrals, main office churches if you like, located at both ends of Hope Street. This is the Catholic Cathedral, a very modern looking structure;



I was trying to take a picture of the Anglican Cathedral but there were some trees in the way, so I took a picture of the Philharmonic Dining Rooms instead.



This has been described as England's most ornate pub and on entering I could see why. I didn't take any photographs inside but it seemed that almost every other customer was. Surely it must be England's most photographed pub!





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These three buildings dominate the waterfront at Pier Head. They are from left to right; The Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building.



On top of the Liver Building you can find these two Liver Birds. This bird is a symbol of Liverpool and can be found on Liverpool Football Clubs logo. Many stories exist about the birds on top of this building, my favourite is that the female is looking out to sea to check that the sailors are safe, while the male bird is looking into the city to check that the pubs are open!
By the way, the clock face you can see is bigger than Big Ben!



Liverpool sits on the River Mersey, and looking out from Pier Head we can see a Mersey Ferry making its way across the river. There's a famous song by Gerry Marsden about this called simply, Ferry 'Cross the Mersey. It can usually be found in the karaoke boxes of Tokyo, and I have sang it many times.



Moving on from the Pier Head we come to the Albert Dock. This was the world's first fire proof warehouse system. Built from cast iron and brick it was a major improvement over the wooden structures that had existed before. It also allowed ships to unload/load their goods directly from the warehouses, speeded everything up.



This is a new addition to the things to see and do in Liverpool. It's called a duck (because it can travel on land and water) and offers a guided tour of the city. Lots more fun than a boring old sightseeing bus!



Here it is in the Canning Dock!

If you are ever in Liverpool I can't recommend this enough. A big thanks to John and Chris who were our driver and guide on our tour. Thanks for the informative tour and a bigger thank you for the jokes and entertainment!

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