Big Day at School

Yesterday was a big day at the international school.

First, we did a painting project. When Jen Em was here, the kids made animals out of modeling clay. The animals have now dried and are ready to be painted. I wanted to give the kids a little lesson on colors and mixing colors first, though. So that was what we did yesterday. We used the paints that we’ll be using to paint the animals. The animals can’t be painted with (washable) poster-paint or tempera (not even tempura, for that matter!), since if they got wet, the paint would all run off. So we were using acrylic, permanent paints.

This was a little stressful, since the acrylic paint WILL NOT come off clothing, desks, chairs, backpacks, etc once it dries. Before we began, I gave the kids a big speech about how I needed to see that they were being responsible painters and not walking around with their brushes, not waving them in the air, not rocking in their chairs, etc or they would get a horrible punishment (so horrible I couldn’t even tell them any more about it, except to tell them that they did not want to have to find out more about it). That worked, and for the most part, the kids seemed to follow these rules.

The one rule I forgot to articulate? When you are done painting, DO NOT pour the water you were using to rinse your paintbrush into your paint palette, swoosh it all around, and create a big, sloshy, wet, dark mess of paint-water. Permanent paint-water. So, yeah, clean-up time was fun as the kids attempted to carry their paint palettes to the sink.

Also, here’s a funny story from the school: a parent each gave the two teachers advent calendars. Teacher A opens hers up on the first day and it has a picture of a little angel flying sweetly through the sky. Teacher B opens hers up on the first day and sees the word “DIE.” Turns out it is a German advent calendar and the calendar is going to make some sort of sentence.

After school ended yesterday, I hustled over to the performing arts center here in Tsukuba, since the school was putting on a fundraiser to buy new computers. The school hosted the Austrian Ballet Company, Tokyo for short selections from Don Quixote and A Christmas Carol. It was pretty fun, and afterwards the kids from the school got to go up on stage and hand flowers to the dancers and have their pictures taken with them. Very cute.