Being the only person my son hears speaking Swedish every day, of course it comes upon me to be the Swedish “teacher-in-charge” in his life. I have taken the task to my heart and every day I continue trying to make us work on different aspects of the Swedish language, but in a way that […]
I guess it started last year already – the talk among parents at kindergarten about backpacks for elementary school children. Simply put, during the six years of elementary school, Japanese school children are using a special style of backpack called ランドセル, randoseru, from the imported Dutch word ransel meaning backpack. I have grown up with the
With the Japanese school year coming to an end and Swedish family coming to Japan to visit, our little family made a trip to Tokyo to meet them. But before seeing our relatives, we visited the world of Star Wars! As it happens, there was a Star Wars pop-up store in Ginza that I had
Our son has been practicing skipping rope a lot this year. He slowly got the hang of the basic idea and managed to swing the rope behind him and climb over in a slow fashion. Then suddenly one day he came home from kindergarten and said I can skip now. At first I was unsure
With a toddler in the house, time really flies. Walking to the bus stop in the morning, enjoying the spring blossom, I feel like the day two years ago when I wrote a post about magnolias, must have been just yesterday. I always look forward to this time of the year. Soft warm air, no
Last Friday it was time for 発表会, happyoukai – the kindergarten’s annual on-stage presentation. Every February the children sing and perform plays on a big stage in a cultural center, and parents and relatives come to see their children perform. For our son this was the third happyoukai, and we were so happy to see
Since our son turned 5 we have been practicing riding a bicycle. We found a second hand bicycle that looked like the right size for a toddler, and it included a bag with support wheels. But having heard that those could slow down the learning process or actually make it more difficult, I decided to
One of the things we like about our kindergarten is that our son gets to experience all kinds of activities. This year there has been soccer, potato digging, art exhibition visit, a visit to the rescue and emergency center. And just before the winter holidays he got to go ice skating for the first time.
This September, my son and I started to participate in online classes organized by Swedish school in Tokyo. My son has joined a group where the focus is to better learn letters, easy reading and writing as well as general Swedish culture. He has really enjoyed being part of this group with other Swedish speaking
Living in a multicultural family, I want our son to whenever possible experience the cultures that both of his parent’s grew up in. I do my best to highlight Swedish traditions in our home, and when we visit Sweden he gets plenty of that. But equally important to me is to value the Japanese cultural
One of the things I like most about our son’s kindergarten, is the different events they arrange during the year. The end of school year recital where the children perform, the summer concert, the sports day and then in autumn the art exhibition. This year a theme of our son’s class has been play with
It has been a year and a half since our son started to go to kindergarten by bus. Except for the too hot summer months when we hide in the shade of a tree playing name-the-car-games, we have made a morning reading routine out of waiting for the bus. Looking back at the first time