Sewing Machine Practice (Junior High School)

Little Brother is in ninth grade and is taking high school entrance exams. While cleaning his room for him, I found this. It is a cloth practice sheet from his seventh grade sewing class. He had to follow these lines on a sewing machine. The white thread he used doesn't show up in this photo. Click to enlarge the photo.

Anyway, on the far left, he folded over the cloth and sewed it following a straight line. Next to that, he had to go down a straight line and then make two corners and continue upward. Click on the label below for other posts about school sewing projects.

Seventh Grade Sewing Projects

Little Brother just finished seventh grade. School was out on the 25th. He brought home his sewing projects.

All seventh graders at his junior high school made a cloth pencil case this year. They were given the white piece of cloth with the zipper already sewn into it. They had to sew the checked piece of cloth onto it. They were also given a button to sew on the bag.

They also made a trivet, a hot pad. They were given squares of felt. They cut out a design and glued the squares together. Little Brother glued the yellow star that he cut from the felt on the other side. He used a sewing machine to stitch around the trivet.

Click on the labels below to see his elementary school sewing kit. He uses it for junior high sewing projects.

Morning Glories

This is our first morning glory this summer. This one is a Japanese morning glory. See the white star? That is the main characteristic of a Japanese morning glory.

When people draw morning glories here, they draw a star in the middle. This flower is one of the symbols of summer.

Here's a summer fan and a handkerchief.

This is what our morning glory looked like yesterday.

We planted a lot of different kinds together. I put the pictures out in front to take this picture. This first morning glory was kinda scraggly, but it was a happy sight.

Hopefully, more will bloom soon. This is near our gate.

The morning glories came in pots like these. We bought them from a flower shop.

We also planted some from seeds. These seed pods were from last year's flowers.

When morning glories first come up, they look like this.

Later as they mature most leaves look like this. Actually, that is sunlight and a shadow on this leaf. Look back at the third picture and click to enlarge. Some morning glories have very different leaves. Some are one color. Some are variegated, with dark green and light green stripes. Some leaves have different shapes.

Growing morning glories is part of Japanese first graders' summer schoolwork. The morning glories at Little Brother's school are big and have been blooming for a while. (I was at the school yesterday.) Do a blog search to find other posts about first graders' morning glories. Little Brother is in sixth grade. Sixth graders are growing potatoes.

Reading Aloud Every Night

At our neighborhood elementary school, students in every grade have to read aloud from their textbook every night. They fill in a chart like this one. First, the date and the title of the piece is filled in. A parent has to mark their performance as "good", "so-so", "needs more work" (that's a rough translation). Little Brother's performance was marked "good". The parent signs it. The next day, the teacher checks the card and puts a sticker next to the parent's signature. Little Brother has a reading card for this year, too. There more things to check in his performance. In first grade, the card had more details to fill in, too.

Students have time for free reading before class starts in the morning. As they are waiting for lunch to be served, they have free reading time. They can take a book from home or go to the school library to check one out.

Fifth Grade Reading Test

This is one of Little Brother's reading tests. He had a hard time finding one with a mistake on it! Can you find the mistake? Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Circles are written on correct answers. Triangles are written on wrong answers. He had to read the article and then answer questions.

Fifth Grade Japanese Class

Little Brother had Japanese class every day last year (see the schedule posted on April 18). These were his kanji books. Each book had a chart of new kanji in the back. There were a total of 156 in these fifth grade books. Click to enlarge the picture to get a closer look. Some exercises were written in the textbook.

Some Japanese language exercises were done in a notebook. On this page, Little Brother numbered and wrote the answers vertically, from top to bottom. Note that he started from the outside of the page and worked his way to the center of the notebook. # 1 through 4 are on the left near the edge of the page. #20 is near the center of the book.

This type of paper is used when practicing how to write kanji. The dotted lines within the square help the student know how big to make the strokes and where to put them.

They can also use notebooks with paper like this.

Students put a plastic sheet under the paper so that there is no imprint on the other pages in the notebook.

Kids Web Japan-- kanji

Math Notebooks

Homework is done in a notebook like this one. Students have notebooks for each subject.

Fifth grade math homework is done in a notebook like this. It has paper with small squares. At our school, parents correct homework after it is finished. A circle is used to show that the answer is correct. See the little pawprint? Little Brother's teacher stamped it to show that she saw the work and recorded it in her book. There is no grade for homework. Just a check, or rather, a circle in the teacher's record book.

Here are examples of the work he did last year. Note the different ways the problems were written on the page.

See the red writing near the top? Papa wrote "mimashita, Chikamatsu". "I saw it, Chikamatsu."

Last Year's Fifth Grade Textbooks

Little Brother used these textbooks in fifth grade last year. They are all paperbacks. Some of these books were used in one semester and others were used in another semester. In other words, they didn't work from all of these books in one week! I guess we could say that some of the textbooks were divided into two or three paperbacks. So, they didn't have to haul heavy books back and forth every day. All public school students walk to school.

Click on the labels below to see the school bag and more school items. Or do a search of this blog.

Fifth Grade Class Schedule

This is Little Brother's fifth grade class schedule from last fall. The kanji on the left at the top says ji kan wari hyou (schedule). It is one word, but I separated it to make it easier to pronounce. Check the link to see how to pronounce it. The grade (5) and the class (2) are written in the middle and then the semester September 1 - December 25. Underneath are the days of the week in kanji. Each day except Wednesday had six periods of study. They had two recesses and lunch every day, too.

Here are the things he studied in the fifth grade (I put them in order of first period, second period, etc.):

Monday-- homeroom, social studies, Japanese, research & presentation, calligraphy, and club.

Tuesday--math, Japanese, home economics for two periods, science, outdoor gym.

Wednesday--Japanese, music, social studies, math, research & presentation.

Thursday--social studies, Japanese, arts & crafts for two periods, math, ethics.

Friday--indoor gym, math, Japanese, science, music, research & presentation.

As you can see, they had different subjects every day. They studied Japanese every day, but at different times of the day. During that time, they learned new kanji, practiced them, and read stories. Little Brother takes his new sixth grade schedule to school with him every day. I'll try to post a picture of it at a later date.

Dr. Bestor's pronunciation chart