Thanks guys!!

Thanks for the Birthday wishes everybody!! I had an excellent Birthday!! Throughout the weekend I had a total of 4 Birthday cakes!! Now I MUST go to a gym!!! :P

Last weekend I...

...went to Nagashima Resort Spa Winter Lights in Mie!!!

Australia Day

Today (January 26th) is Australia Day.

Originally seen as a day to celebrate

the first settlement by Europeans,

it is now starting to be seen as more of a day

to respect indigenous aboriginal culture.

How do we celebrate Australia Day?

Drink a beer and have a BBQ.

(I would also go to the "THE BIG DAY OUT"

which is a music festival in Sydney)

What is that?

Just like Japanese, English also borrows
a lot of words from other languages (French in particular). The problem is that it is difficult to spell these words in English so we need to use ACCENT MARKS to show us how to pronounce them correctly.

The first one we will look at is the ACUTE

which looks like this

é

(a small mark above the letter

from bottom left to top right).

Some examples are the words

café, fiancé, passé, sauté, and touché.

Notice that the acute accent tells you

to pronounce the letter E at the end of the word

and not to read it as a MAGIC E

that would change the sound of the previous vowel

(and therefore have no sound itself).

What does that mean?

Well caf would sound like kɑ:f or kæf.

But cafe (with a magic E) would sound like keɪf

and café would be kɑ:fe

An acute accent mark can be used

over many other letters as well, not just the letter E.

This is just one example of how it is used.

The Poll

We ran the poll for the last 2 weeks because we were so disappointed with the number of voters...
(or lack thereof)
:*(

Please try your best on the poll as it is meant to be a fun way to learn and interact with your teachers!!

The question was I or Me?
''My best friend and _____ are going to the movies tonight.''

I (2 votes)
Me (1 vote)
I don't know.
Both answers are possible.

The correct answer was I!
''My best friend and I are going to the movies tonight.''

As both of these are pronouns used to refer to oneself, deciding which one to use can be a little confusing. ''I'' should be used for the subject of the sentence, the person doing the action (verb). ''Me'' should be used for the object of the sentence.

If you are still not sure which to use, it might be a good idea to pretend as if the other person in the sentence was not there.

For example, ''My best friend and I are going to the movies tonight'', becomes ''I am going to the movies tonight''.

''Becky thought she'd seen Dad and me at the store'', becomes ''Becky thought she'd seen me at the store''.

*Let's try this one again on this week's poll.

Happy Birthday Risa and Rachel

We have two Happy Birthday greetings from last weekend for super cute Risa and Rachel!

Happy Birthday Risa and Rachel from everyone here at RLE!

RISA

RACHEL

Let's Invite Your Friends!

Monkey business

How does a chimpanzee make toast?

He puts bread under a gorilla

(*gorilla sounds like griller)

January 26th is Australia Day!!

This week in playschool we are celebrating Australia Day! It is celebrated annually on January 26th to commemorate the arrival of the First Fleet of ships that sailed from Great Britain to establish the first European colony in Australia.

Below is a famous nursery rhyme that comes from Australia.
It is about the Kookaburra (an Australian Kingfisher).

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
Merry merry king of the bush is he.
Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra,
Gay your life must be!

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Eating all the gum drops he can see
Stop, Kookaburra! Stop, Kookaburra!
Leave some there for me.

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Counting all the monkeys he can see
Stop, Kookaburra! Stop, Kookaburra!
That's not a monkey that's me.

*This is a slower version of the song.

What I did on the weekend...

Last Sunday I went to Sanjusangen-do in Kyoto

to watch the archery exhibition (Toshiya).

They were participating as part of

their "coming of age ceremony".

I got there in the afternoon and all the boys

had finished so I only saw the girls shoot.

They didn't hit the target very often,
in fact almost not at all. But it was
still interesting to see.

:Phil

Have you seen...

How To Train Your Dragon!?!

It was SUCH a good movie!
I rented and watched it last night (*twice, it was that good).
My sister recommended it to me and now I am recommending it to you!
It has the best digital effects to date and a very exciting and interesting story.

Happy Birthday Sumire

This week we have one Happy Birthday greeting for cutie patootie Sumire!

Happy Birthday Sumire from everyone here at RLE!

SUMIRE

Tongue Twister of the week!

Here is a tricky tongue twister to practice the letter sounds:
'r' and 'l'.

Tip and tap, rip and rap, lip and lap.
Tip, rip, lip, tap, rap, lap.

*Just so you know this tongue twister has no meaning.

I saw him, that is to say I've seen him.

Regular VERBS are easy, just add ~ed to the end.

(e.g Jumped, kicked, cooked etc)

But IRREGULAR VERBS are difficult.

Here is a good list of irregular verbs.

http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/verbs.htm

Try and remember as many as you can.
Good luck, there are SO many!

fəʊ ˈnet.ɪks

Have you noticed the funny letters

next to words in the dictionary?

They are phonetic symbols that

tell you how to pronounce the word.

Because we all know that English

spelling is difficult and strange.

Have a look at the list below to see

how to read the symbols.

Click on the above picture to enlarge.

Pidgin 101

Waaaaasssssuuuupp! Happy New Year to everybadeh! Howzit! Tanks fo stoppin by fo anothah pidgin lesson. Today not pidgin, but instead we goin teach you some Haaawaiian. Everybadeh when get a card in da mail huh? And you when see my message? Ha?! You all fohget??? Well fo everybadeh who wen fohget, hea's my message.

Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau'oli Hana Hou!

Alooooha! And Happy New Year! Well, we are going to start off this year's pidgin lesson with a message that I wrote on all of your cards. For those of you who are wondering: What does this mean? Well, let me translate for you.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and hope everyone has a very wonderful, prosperous New Year! Stay tuned for the next pidgin lesson.

Shooooooots brah! Take it easy!

Draconian results

Last weeks poll question was,

"What is your New Year's resolution?"

And the most popular results were,

Save money
Learn a Language
Exercise more

All with 75%

&

Loose Weight
Slay a dragon

With 50%

I'm surprised more people don't want to slay a dragon !?!?!

If you chose "other" please specify
in the comments section below.

Thanks to everyone who voted
and don't forget to check out this weeks poll question.

Where is Phil ?

Can anyone guess where

I went last weekend?

There was a castle.

It was close to the sea.

It had a very famous bath house.

New blog feature!!!

We are please to announce that we are starting something new for 2011! :D
It's very exciting!
Are you excited??

Drum roll please....
...
...
...

A HAPPY BIRTHDAY FEATURE!!
Woot woot!!

Starting this month we will not only be celebrating our student's birthdays in the school on the bulletin board but also here on the blog!!
This way classmates and friends can leave comments and birthday greetings :D

So to start off, this week we have 2 Happy Birthday greetings for Reika and Marie!

Happy Birthday to each of you from everyone here at RLE.

REIKA

MARIE

*If you do not wish to have your photo posted on this blog it is no problem at all, it is completely voluntary.*

Rachel's New Year's Holiday

I had a nice and relaxing holiday in Osaka with some friends :D

I tried osechi with snow crab and lobster-like prawns.
It was SO delicious!!

For breakfast I tried mochi soup.
It was not so delicious.

I tried going to a shrine in Ibaraki but the wait time was around 2 HOURS so I decided not to wait. Instead I went to an unpopular shrine in Kyoto on another day.

This shrine was built similarly to Ise shrine in Mie.

There was this awesome rock that you could walk through for good luck!
It was really cool.

What did you do for New Year's??
Share some of your activities in the comments below :)

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Phil!!
On Wednesday we had a little cake party for our favorite Australian.
:D

It's a playschool Christmas!

The last playschool class of 2010 was a big hit!
We made beaded clay/foam ornaments for our Christmas trees!!
Check out the action below :D

ACTION!

Check out the new

Real Life lesson video

on our homepage.


It's definetly oscar material.

Hope you all had a great New Year holiday! We are looking forward to seeing you this week and hearing all about your holiday activities! :D See you soon.