Peace be with you this season in the midst of the Covid-19 global pandemic.Merry Christmas 2020

If you walk along the Futaba pathway to Saint Maur, you will see a manger scene (during the day and lit at night).During Advent, on the way to our weekly trip to the library in the main building, we stopped near the entrance to have a look at the manger scene in the hallway.Yes, we were getting ready for the coming of Christmas and the Christmas concert.  However, due to Covid-19, it was decided that we could not invite the parents to the Fine Arts Auditorium for the Montessori/Elementary and French Section concerts.  We decided instead to videotape the “live” performances on stage and send it to the families so that the children could watch the concerts with their parents before the holidays.  Each class had a Christmas dance to perform, while our older children were to play Handbell songs. Everyone rehearsed hard each day.Unfortunately, the last eight days before the Christmas vacation went online again.  And we never got to record our concert performance in the auditorium.  We also missed our annual visit to the chapel during Christmastime.  Our Christmas pizza lunch party was canceled. But we all wanted to be safe, and so we cooperated. We had our Class Zoom meetings, a combined three-class PE/movement session, and a Family Christmas Zoom online get-together.

Earlier we had a chance to participate in the Christmas charity projects, bringing coins and bags of assorted presents for the homeless people.  Our principal came to explain about the coin jar that would be placed at the entrance. Since we only had one day in the classroom together in the month of December, here are some activities taking place earlier in the library and the classroom.

We found more citrus fruits on the tree!Number workSinging “A, a, apple” Our minds are full of ideas.  Creating a Christmas tree by segments, connecting plastic pieces together, or using different shapes with magnets. Some learned the names of 10 different geometric shapes.

Our favorite lunchtime.In our map studies, we looked at our Continent globe and flat maps of the continents.We saw where we live, pinned and pasted the country of Japan and the regions including Kanto on our own paper maps.We also studied the seven continents as we pinned our world map.Some students pinned and pasted the map of Australia, which included the territories and states, and the country flag. The year 2020 was an unprecedented school year.  Let’s pray that the new year 2021 will be one of hope and peace in the world.  And, hopefully, we will all be able to travel around the world again.We miss the days together in our sunny play area on the roof.  Please have a nice Christmas vacation at home with your family.  See you soon in the classroom in January. Till then, stay safe and healthy.