My Diary: My students are cool!

Yesterday, one of my students took my sunglasses, put them on, and said "I'm cool !"  I usually just teach English, but sometimes I also teach them how to be "cool".
cool - かっこいい

My Diary: Easter Egg Hunt

 私の日記を読みながら新しい言葉を探しましょう。読んでから質問に答えなさい。コメント部分に答えを残してください。

Download the audio and listen!

単語
1. covered in mud -泥だらけ
2. Easter egg hunt - 卵探し
3. watch out for - 何とかに気を付けて
4. crow -からす
5. work of art - 名作
6. cellophane - セロハン
7. snatch - ひったくる
8. stuffed animal - ぬいぐるみ


りかいCheck!

1. Where did I hide the eggs?
2. What did I watch out for?
3. Why did my mom laugh while raking leaves?
4. Why did we have the Easter Egg hunt late?

マイストーリ

Even though it is a little late, I thought it would be fun to have an Easter egg hunt for the Japanese kids that I teach at the pre-school.  Easter was on April the 8th, but it has been raining so much lately, we haven't had a chance to go to the park without getting covered in mud.  Today, the weather was perfect for playing outside!  First, I went to the park with the eggs and hid them behind bushes, under benches, and next to trees.  I was careful though、to watch out for birds because last year while I was doing the same thing, a giant crow came and snatched one of the eggs and flew off!  After hiding them, the kids came and looked for them.  They seemed to really enjoy it, and one of the little girls ate half of her egg!

I remember when I was a kid, in the days prior to Easter, I couldn't wait for my mother to boil the eggs so that my brother and I could color them.  She would prepare many colors to dip the eggs in, and we also used crayons to decorate them.  I was very serious about coloring my eggs; to me, they were considered a work of art.  After coloring the eggs, we let them dry. Then, the night before, while my brother and I were sleeping, my mother would place the eggs along with many chocolates and candy that she bought in a big Easter basket, one each for the both of us. I remember the baskets were so beautiful, filled with green cellophane, brightly colored eggs, chocolates, candy, jellybeans, and sometimes a small plastic toy or stuffed animal in the shape of a bunny.

After waking up on Easter morning, I was so happy to see my Easter basket filled with many goodies.  My mother would let us eat one or two chocolates before going to church.  After we got home, our parents would take the eggs and hide them in the backyard for us to find.  It was always fun looking for them. The funny part was that in all the excitement, sometimes we would forget how many eggs there were and not know if we had found all of them.  I remember one time I found one in the Fall while outside raking leaves with my mom, and we had a good laugh!

My Diary - Rainy day

単語

raining cats and dogs - 土砂降りの雨

rainboots - 長靴

thunder and lightning - 雷と稲妻

interval - 間

りかいcheck!

1. How can you tell if the lightning is close or far from where you are?

2. Is there more thunder and lightning in Japan or in Florida?

3. When I was a child, where did I like to be during a storm?

マイストーリ

Today it has been raining cats and dogs all day. I hate being wet, so I made sure to wear my rainboots and raincoat.  This afternoon, I noticed a little thunder, but I didn't see any lightning.  It seems like in Japan there isn't a lot of thunder and lightning.  In Florida, there is often a lot of thunder and lightning, and it is much louder and brighter.  When I was a child, I remember the thunder was sometimes so lound that it shook the walls of the house.  It was said that if you counted the number of seconds between the time that the lightning flashed and the time that the thunder boomed, you could tell how close it struck.  If the interval was just one second, then it meant that the lightning struck about one mile away.  As a child I enjoyed laying in front of the sliding glass door to my back yard at night and waiting for the lightning to strike as I listened to the heavy rain drum down.  When it came, even though it was so black outside, the lightning lit up everything as clear as day.  The only time I would get scared was when the interval between the thunder and the lightning was too quick too count.