Christmas Crafts and Ultimate Frisbee

I’m at one of my elementary schools for three days this week. The students are making Christmas arts and crafts with me. (Just because it's not a holiday I don't personally celebrate is no reason for them to not expect a lesson on the typical Western culture). Today the first and second graders made wreaths. They had already made the actual wreaths out of sweet potato roots and morning glory vines, but today they decorated them with ribbons, pipe cleaners, bows, leaves and a whole array of other items. It was pretty fun.

To set the mood I downloaded some Christmas music. That’s right, while most of you have been complaining about being sick of Christmas music, I went out of my way to get some. I also drew a few pictures of a snowman, a Christmas tree, etc. on the board, but this school’s stock of chalk is woefully lacking in colors compared to my junior high school.

I got my own wreath to decorate. When I started working on it, I thought it would look somewhat classy—well, as classy as a random arts and crafts project can be. However, the kids just kept giving me their random scraps and I used whatever they gave me. After receiving more ribbons than I knew what to do with, I tied one in my hair. This was a big hit and I ended up tying ribbons in 2 or 3 girls’ hair before the end of class. I also got a random pipe cleaner creation which I turned into a clip-on earring. Of course this meant that I had to turn pipe cleaners into earrings for the kids too.

I snapped this picture of myself in the teachers’ room in front of all the decorations I’ve hung up in there. My wreath is now hanging by the shrinky-dinks I made earlier this year. If I keep going at this rate, by the time I leave Japan this teachers’ room will be covered in my artwork. Also, check out my bling.

After yesterday’s dodgebee, I got the urge to bring Ultimate Frisbee to Japan. Today at lunch the third graders asked what kinds of games children in Chicago play. So I offered to teach them Ultimate at recess.

After lunch I looked up have, throw, move, and fall in the dictionary. When recess came, I borrowed a dodgebee disk and headed outside armed with the scrap of paper where I wrote the words I would need. I explained the rules. I explained them a couple times in fact. There are really only 3 or 4 rules that need to be understood. The kids seemed to understand. They made the connection to American football on their own. Then we started to play.

At this point I think the only rule they retained was that there were two teams. Because as soon as we started, it just became “throw the Frisbee and chase after it”. It was really windy, so very few throws were actually caught. However, one team apparently scored four points. Although, since we played the entire game in their endzone, I’m not sure what they were using as a criterion for scoring. Although they missed some of the finer points of the game (namely all of them), they seemed to have fun, which I guess is the important part.

Tomorrow the third and fourth graders get to make wreaths.