Blueberry Pre-School

Some of you may be wondering...What else does Jane do besides writing or thinking of blog posts?

Well, for that downtime between posts I have Blueberry Pre-School! A friend of ours recommended I give them a call and see if they needed another teacher and they did! So I guess I've officially switched careers (for those not in the know I was a nurse in New York).

It is an English pre-school where Japanese kids learn to play. Not kidding about that. Many of the kids come from single-child homes and have absolutely no idea how to play with other children or have never spent time away from their mothers/family. We've had two new arrivals this month and it was non-stop waterworks in the playroom. Luckily, they got over the shock pretty fast.

All of the kids speak some English, except one who doesn't even speak Japanese yet but he's 2.5 years old! Saying that these kids are out-of-this-world cute is an understatement. For instance, on my first day, they went through as much of their English song repertoire as we could get to- song selections that included classics such as the ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Bob the Builder and they even threw in the most adorable rendition of Stand by Me, complete with gestures. I couldn't even sing along with them for the entire song because I didn't know all the lyrics...but they charged on!

I guess it sounds like it's all fun and games where I work but I just want to stress that this job is no piece of cake!! Keeping the attention of up to 10 preschoolers for longer than 10 minutes is hard! And I have to do it for at least 120 minutes at a time (we have snack time and lunch so it breaks up the day). I think I've ran out of games to play and songs to sing.

Also, some kids spontaneously start crying (I swear I'm not mean). Actually the kids that cry are usually the new ones. The best part is that all the other kids will stop and try to comfort them. Aw. They are so kind!!

So that's my job! Stay tuned for more cute anecdotes!